It's my first day, my first day as an intern at TTM. Of course first days make you nervous. You enter to a unknown environment, you don't know what to expect and you also don't really know what to do. So I enter the rather small TTM building. The kids are not yet here, so I take some moments to orient myself. I start looking at the colourful by kids hands drawn and written statements, which are sticked to the wall. Statements about what we want, what we need or how we see things. These kind of statements are known from protests, from political gatherings or similar events. We relate some kind of political or social consciousness to the act of expressing your oppinion or to even have one. This ability is mostly not seen in 'kids'. They are not granted an own opinion. We speak for kids, instead of with kids. Not so in Tarlabasi. In TTM kids are treated as human beings, who are able to have and express their own oppinion. TTM's staff gives them the possibility to access sometimes unknown mind sets, encourages them to question things and enables them to have a glimpse in to different horizons.

I take of my eyes of the colourful wall and Nurgül explains me some things about being a volunteer at TTM. She says 'We learn from eachother'. During my whole time in Tarlabsi, this sentence sticked in my head and it gave me a lot of relief. I was not supposed to to teach the kids everything and explain them the world. They would explain me things, I listen to them, maybe question their statement, but so would they. I learned to have vivid discussions with kids. Discussions which also opened by mind and gave me access to new ways of seeing things. For all these expieriences I want say: çok ama çok teşekkür ederim!

2014.