Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
They worked in pursuit of a better tomorrow
Through their efforts, they contributed to the lives of others
They empowered others, creating new opportunities and hope.
They spent their days for the sake of this purpose,
without any expectation of honor or praise.
They never relinquished their faith that tomorrow could be better.
And they never gave up.
"Turkey's Changemakers" is looking for people who make a difference in others lives
from all across Turkey.
Sabancı Foundation's "Turkey's Changemakers" begins...
Dear viewers, welcome to a new episode of 'Turkey's Changemakers'
where we seeki unsung heroes who made a difference in the lives of others
so that we can introduce them to you.
Maybe you have heard of some of our Changemakers,
maybe you have not.
Welcome to our new episode of "Turkey's Changemakers",
brought to you with the support of the Sabancı Foundation.
Today, we are introducing Gültekin Yazgan who made an impact
in his own life and in the lives of others like him.
I don't know if you have heard about him before,
but he is the founder of the Six Dots Association for the Blind.
He became visually impaired when he was a child. But he never lost hope
or gave up on life; on the contrary, he held on to life even more.
He attended a teacher's training school after finishing elementary school.
He did not find this enough however, and received a Law degree.
He did not only concentrate on his studies however; he was also
very involved with his social environment and wanted to help out other visually impaired persons.
He spent many years for the sake of this purpose.
Today, the Six Dots Association for the Blind is one of the most active
organizations working with visually impaired persons.
Gültekin Yazgan did not stop there however;
he also founded the Library for the Visually Impaired, which is located in Izmir.
Dear viewers, we are sharing a very interesting
and inspiring story with you tonight.
We are sure that Gültekin Yazgan's story will open
your eyes to a whole new world.
We don't see them most of the time.
And when we do see them, we pretend we did not.
Although they cannot see us,
we still try to be invisible to them.
But they do see.
They know and feel very well that
we are distancing ourselves from them.
They also feel and know when we lend them a hand,
when we help them out and become a voice in their lives.
Because although we treat them like "others",
they are just like us.
They are only deprived of one of their senses,
but they swim in a much larger sea than ours.
Maybe you never had a visually impaired friend as a child,
but they are also trying to play in the streets
and they attend school just like you do.
They have to prepare for elementary school
school and learn how to read and write
with the help of their devoted teachers.
Although not from a blackboard,
they learn how to solve mathematical problems
and to use an alphabet which is way harder than the Latin alphabet.
- We have this tool which we call a "tablet"
As you can see, there are small squares in each small box.
There are six dots in these squares.
We use these six dots in different shapes
in order to form the letters of our alphabet.
Our students first learn how to use this six dots system.
Although it seems hard for visually impaired persons to learn how to read
and write, what follows is even harder.
Because until very recently, they neither have a library tailored to their needs,
nor books that they could read.
However, a hardworking Changemaker came along to break
this ill fate of visually impaired persons in Turkey.
He was only 11 years old.
He had an unfortunate accident on a cold day of February 1939.
His life was full of light when he entered the hospital;
when he was released, that light was gone.
It was the beginning of April 1939.
My mother in my arm, I was leaving the Cerrahpasa Hospital,
where I stayed for more than two months.
I was not leaving the hospital to go back to my old life,
however. I was not going to able to reunite with the sunshine,
my books, notebooks and classmates to whom I could not even say goodbye.
Those were all left behind.
I was starting a new life; I was starting my "blindflight"
I was starting my "blindflight"
In his own words, that was when he started his "blind flight".
It was people around him who were blind however, not him.
They believed that he cannot achieve anything without his vision,
so he was forced to drop out of school.
Although he embraced his blindness,
he refused to live without a purpose.
He started to learn the English language.
With the support of private instructors, he learnt the English language using the Braille alphabet.
While attending the English language school offered by the British Council,
he met the head of British Council of Turkey,
who gave him a bag full of books, as a present.
These books were sent from London, UK.
That was the first time Gültekin Yazgan was introduced Braille books.
That was when he started envisioning founding the first library
for the blind in Turkey.
Those books have changed his life.
He graduated from high school
and started to attend the Faculty of Law at University of Ankara.
As a student at Ankara University, he founded the Six Dots Association
for the Blind with the goal of helping visually impaired persons in their studies.
He graduated from university in 1952
and started working as a Social Sciences
and English teacher in the Ankara School for the Blind
while working as an intern lawyer.
He did not seem to be bothered by the darkness before his eyes,
and worked very hard to eliminate all obstacles in his way.
He wanted to prove to everyone that a visually impaired teacher can teach at a regular school and asked for appointment.
When his request was denied, he talked to the Minister of Education of the time
and convinced him to approve his appointment to a vocational institute as a Law teacher.
His dreams were being realized one by one
and he kept discovering new paths in his "blind flight".
However, his biggest ambition was to set up a library for the blind
and publish audio books and Braille magazines
- Gültekin Yazgan was our teacher at the Ankara School for the Blind.
He went to England in 1960 and when he came back,
he told us how visually impaired persons
were treated there and how they participated in social life.
Particularly, he told us about audio books
and how they were going to be available one day in Turkey.
We thought that they were going to come immediately,
therefore we asked about them every month in our regular meetings.
He told us that it was still early to expect them.
However, we did not think that they would take this long
We are in 2009,
so we have been waiting for
audio books for 50 years.
After successfully working as a teacher for 20 years,
Gültekin Yazgan retired from this profession.
He did not retire from life, however.
He kept on working as an independent laywer
while preparing Braille books for children.
And 5 years ago, he realized that it was time to set up the Library for the Visually Impaired.
He was 77 years old when he established the library
with the help of 16 of his friends.
But his ideals were not entirely fulfilled yet.
- I dreamed about a library for the visually impaired for many years.
It was my dream waiting to be realized for a long time.
I worked to realize it for many years.
Being blind is not so bad after all!
This is not a typical library.
do not read books in silence here; on the contrary
this library is ruled by sound and hardworking individuals.
In this library, they prepare Magazines and read books
and prepare audio CDs for the visually impaired,
and these materials get sent to their addresses free of charge.
This library, which is entirely run by volunteers, has different sections
In the audio books section, literature classics,
poems and spelling books are read out and recorded as audio files.
Afterwards, these audio files get transferred into audio CDs
and these CDs get mailed to visually impaired persons.
There are 65 thousand audio books in their archives at the moment.
- I would have loved to share your concerns, but do not tire yourself
You are not obliged to tell me anything.
- We do not only read out books here.
We also read out magazine articles that are provided to us
by the Library for the Visually Impaired. We follow a program decided by the Library.
We read out wellknown poems.
We also read out spelling books for the Turkish language,
which is I consider as crucially important.
It is our duty to help out organizations as such.
Because I believe that we should be concerned about the problems of our society
rather than only dealing with our personal problems.
In the other section of the library,
volunteers are preparing Braille books and magazines.
The Library has been publishing
2 monthly magazines since 2004.
Since then, "Friend" and "Honeybee" magazines
were mailed to 105,000 visually impaired persons free of charge.
And although every new issue is still being sent to subscribers free of charge,
the Library still has to depend on donations
as it was unable to find
a shipping sponsor to this day.
- I try to read novels. We ask the Library for the Visually Impaired to prepare
our novels in Braille and they do the best they can to help us.
I was first admitted to the History program at Ege University.
They printed my English books in Braille.
Afterwards, I was admitted to Dokuz Eylul University to study Turkish.
They printed my grammar textbooks, which was very important for the class.
I could not have understood it properly if it was read out to me.
I could have failed if I did not have that grammar textbook.
We can listen to novels, we have access to almost every novel.
They provide CDs to help out visually impaired persons
with the public personnel selection examination.
They print books for us. They publish "Honeybee"
and "Baby Honeybee" magazines for children. These magazines feature
poems, short stories and information about famous authors.
We are provided with everything we need access to.
- Aydın and Ahmet live in the same neighbourhood. Although they lived
in different streets and went to different schools, they always played together.
In the middle of a series of apartment buildings,
there was an open field where all kids would gather to play.
I read with my hands. There are different letters here,
that's how I read. Our letters are formed by six dots.
All 29 letters of our alphabet are formed by six dots.
It was very hard for me to learn it at the beginning.
I thought it was impossible for me to learn it when I first started.
But I did learn it. My teachers taught me. I'm reading "The Little Prince" now.
Once I'm done, I will read "My Sweet Orange Tree".
In one of the sections of the library,
visually impaired persons are given computer classes.
The aim is to help them learn how to use a computer
with the help of an audio assistance system.
Thereby, their chances of finding jobs increase greatly.
- I had a monotone life before attending this course.
I was not coming to Izmir very often, my self-confidence level was very low.
Now, I have more friends
and I am also aware of opportunities that are provided to us.
I am looking for a job currently and I come here whenever I find the time.
I see my friends here. I enrolled in an distance learning program at high school.
These are the changes I experienced after coming here.
Gültekin Yazgan never gave up when faced with difficulties.
He achieved so many great things;
things that even people who are able to see may hesitate to dare trying.
He is a great hero in the eyes of many visually impaired persons.
And therefore, a famous author from Turkey, Dogan Cuceloglu,
wrote about the Changemaking story of
Gültekin Yazgan and his wife in his latest book.
- You can feel the love in their story. They have a strong sense of love.
They love living and being productive.
They cling to life and strive to become the best they can.
And they do this with a great deal of enthusiasm.
They are unsung heroes and they want to change our understanding of
what a real hero should be like.
Gültekin Yazgan and his wife, Tulay Yazgan were also caring parents.
They raised Yankı Yazgan, a wellknown psychologist in Turkey
and Çağrı Yazgan, again a wellknown psychiatrist.
Moreover, they strived to be the parents of thousands of
visually impaired persons from all across Turkey.
Today, the library they have set up with the help of 16 friends of theirs
serves around 3,000 people.
Run entirely by hardworking volunteers
this library enlightens the world of these visually impaired persons.
- Damla is here.
- Hello. - Hello! How are you? Your hair got longer!
- Yes it did. - What grade are you in now? Grade 5?
- No, I'm in Grade 6. - Very well! Damla is an old friend of ours.
She used to say that she hears footsteps right? (Laughs) My dear Damla!
We want to publish more magazines.
Our library, the Library for the Visually Impaired,
does not only consist of a pile of books.
We are a library that produces books and CDs and sends these materials to all across Turkey and the world.
We want to set up a material borrowing system.
We want readers to borrow books
available in our library for a certain amount of time.
We did not achieve this yet, however.
Gültekin Yazgan was never left in the dark in his "blindflight"
he started when he was 11.
He believed that it was only his vision
that were darkened, not his life in general.
Instead of giving up on life, he embraced his blindness
and started a struggle. He made a huge difference in the lives
of visually impaired persons of his generation
and of many generations to come.
Dear viewers,
this was the story of Gültekin Yazgan, a true Changemaker
who always had his eyes open to the world.
If you think you
or someone you may know is a Changemakers,
I will explain how to participate in our program after a short break.
We will return following a short break.
Today, we introduced you the founder of the Six Dots Assocation for the Blind.
We are seeking hardworking and dedicated Changemakers from all across Turkey.
If you think you or someone you know is a Changemaker,
please fill out the nomination form at www.farkyaratanlar.org
Or you can call us at +90-212-249-23-14. Our friends will direct you to the right place.
We thoroughly assess each and every nomination form
with our Advisory Board and decide on
which nominees are going to be featured on our program.
Until the next episode of "Turkey's Changemakers", this is Cüneyt Özdemir
wishing you a good evening from the SEED Conference Center of the Sabancı University Sakıp Sabancı Museum, İstanbul.
They worked in pursuit of a better tomorrow
Through their efforts, they contributed to the lives of others
They empowered others, creating new opportunities and hope.
They spent their days for the sake of this purpose,
without any expectation of honor or praise.
They never relinquished their faith that tomorrow could be better.
And they never gave up.
"Turkey's Changemakers" is looking for people who make a difference in others lives
from all across Turkey.