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Rural Schools Transformation Network

We are an association that has been working since 2016 to ensure that children in villages receive a better education. We carry out educational activities for teachers, teacher candidates and parents, conduct research and advocacy studies on educational issues in rural areas, and develop educational content appropriate to local conditions.

It is only possible for all children to be ready for the future, to discover and realize themselves, with a proper education.

In order to clearly see the results of our field visits, which we started in 2015, we wanted to determine the situation of teachers in the villages from different regions and conducted a survey with these teachers in 2016. With this study, we have obtained a framework for education in rural schools. Following this study, we conducted interviews and field visits that included families and children. We published our report "Village Schools and Village Students from Teachers' Perspectives: Advantages, Problems, Solution Suggestions", which includes all these studies and research. “Village Schools and Village Students from the Teacher's Perspective: Advantages, Problems, Solution Suggestions” We published our report. 

The report we prepared and the results of the research we conducted showed us the following:

In addition to all these data, this research also showed that there are important opportunities in villages, such as "Schools being in touch with nature", "Fewer students in classes" and "Proximity between school, family and village". This led to the emergence of the idea of KODA.  

We obtained our official status as the Rural Schools Transformation Network Association in 2016. We started our first field activities in February 2017 and received our first funding in October 2017. In December 2018, when we entered the first year of our establishment, we won an award in the İbrahim Bodur Social Entrepreneurship Awards program. While continuing our work intensively, we launched the "Rural School Teachers Project" in 2019 and started our cooperation with the Teacher Training and Development Directorate of the Ministry of National Education in July 2019. We joined the Ashoka Fellowship network in November of the same year. Our close contacts with the Ministry of National Education turned into a cooperation protocol in December 2020. We tried to disseminate the Solution Desk content during the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2021. In XNUMX, we started our work to implement the Rural Education and R&D Center in Orhaneli, Bursa, and at the same time, we started training parents so that families in the villages can take more responsibility in the educational process of their children. We also started our parent training so that families in the villages can take more responsibility for their children's education.

Why is education important in rural areas?

Ensuring that every child can have a quality education, whether they live in a village, in rural neighborhood or in the city, is a very important investment for our future.

In a study conducted by the World Bank in 2010, it was determined that the key determinant of inequality of opportunity in education in Turkey, after the income difference factor, was whether children studied in rural areas or in cities. The results of this research show us that: in researchIt has been determined that the biggest determinant of inequality of opportunity in education in Turkey, after the difference in income, is whether children study in rural or urban areas. The results of this research show us that:

About Our Founder Mine Ekinci

The Marmara Earthquake changed the life of Mine Ekinci, the founder of our association. Mine Ekinci, who settled in her grandmother's village after the earthquake, first graduated from Robert College and then from Boğaziçi University, Department of Political Science and International Relations. Mine Ekinci, who has been involved in volunteer work since her high school years, simultaneously observed the good schools in Istanbul and the schools in rural areas when she went to her family on weekends. Inequality of opportunity in education deeply affected him and he completed his master's degree in education policies at Harvard University. As soon as he returned to Turkey, he visited village schools and started his first studies revealing the problems, solutions and opportunities regarding education in the village. Mine Ekinci, who founded our association in 2016, left our association as of January 2024 and started working as Minister Advisor at the Ministry of National Education of the Republic of Turkey. Here he continues to work from all four sides to create more impact for better education in the village.