Author: Betül Yaprak, Izmir Education Cooperative (ASIP İzmir)
Celebrating the 10th anniversary of ASIP İzmir Cooperative
In the early 2000s in Turkey, many parents, academics and teachers who thought that there should be different practices in education, came together and started to work and hold meetings for the “Another School is Possible Model” (ASIP Model). As a result of many years of work, the ASIP Association was founded in 2010 and the ASIP Model was built on the following four pillars: alternative education, ecological stance, democracy and authentic financing (non-profit).
As the work deepened, a rights-based civil society perspective that focuses on public needs was added to this vision, beyond being a parent initiative that came together for the needs of their children. Many volunteers, educators and supporters who did not have children or who were past school age were also participating in all the activities. Their presence deepened the perspective of contributing to public transformation. As a result of this natural development, the vision of the association was revised in a workshop held in 2012 as “To establish schools that realize the rights set out in the Convention on the Rights of the Child, enable children to realize themselves, are governed by participatory democracy, respect the ecological balance, and are established and run by initiatives consisting of families and volunteers on a non-profit basis; to disseminate this educational approach and to serve as a model for the realization of other similar schools”.
On April 7, 2014, we have founded the Izmir Another School is Possible (ASIP) Education Cooperative with 11 partners. Soon ffter, we launched the Colorful Forest Kindergarten in September 2015, named by the children. Growing with new families and educators joining us, our cooperative opened the Colorful Forest Primary School in 2017. The needs we encountered in the process of putting alternative and democratic education into practice led us to train trainers. While focusing especially on forest/nature schools and democratic education in Izmir, we have started to share our experiences with other educators and organize free trainings for educators.
The people here have one thing in common: We all believe that another world is possible. And each of us has demonstrated this in a different way over the past years. Some of us took the initiative 10 years ago and set up a small cooperative in pursuit of a dream, lighting the first spark. Some of us believed in this dream and became part of it to make it grow. And of course, the real stars, the educators and employees, added their labor, energy and colors and shaped the identity of this structure.
As our children grew up and graduated, our dream became a reality: Today, we are one of the largest and pioneering education cooperatives in the country, with 43 employees, over 200 partners and hundreds of volunteers. We work on alternative education, children’s rights and solidarity economies.
“Cooperatives first and foremost produce relationships.” One of the actions that paves the way for another world is the “dialog” that arises from these relationships. We believe that this kind of relationship and dialogue is the potential that the cooperative and the school offer us, the children. Dialogue can only come from a deep love of the world and of human beings.
One of the aspects of the ASIP movement that makes it special is that it is a civil society movement that paved its own path in this country, rather than walking on a path that has already been paved.
As the Education Cooperative, we started out as a social economy actor, but today we have transformed into a community and continue as a solidarity economy actor. In our ASIP community, we now have structures such as choir, book club, exchange community, food collective, solidarity fund, common works that keep us all together and unite us around the same goal.
Ten years ago a group of parents with the same dream came together, and the following year they were joined by other parents with the same dream in other places. The cooperative and the school were founded, the system was established and came to life. Every year new people are added to our family and we are growing. There is a lot of work, trusting each other, believing in this dream. ASIP became a home for children, families, teachers and all staff. The question we asked back then was, “Can this be possible?”, now we all answer, “Another School is Possible”
The documentary “In the Path of ‘Another’ Schools”, prepared in honor of the 10th anniversary of ASIP Izmir Cooperative, reveals the establishment of the cooperative and the path traveled along the way. The 30-minute film presented not only an educational model but also the traces of a social movement. The film premiered on November 20, 2024, the International Children’s Rights Day.
