Take a Step for Education with Genç Hayat Foundation and HelpSteps!

Let Your Steps Turn into Education!

Help Steps is a health application that automatically records your daily steps and allows you to convert them into HS (Help Steps) steps at the end of the day and donate them. So you can donate for education of children just by walking.

How Do I Get Started Using Help Steps?

You can start using the application for free by downloading it from the App Store or Google Play.

You can register for the application by entering your name, surname, e-mail and telephone information.

If a friend sent you an invite, entering the invite code when signing up will earn your friend 50,000 steps. However, you can download and use the application without an invitation code.

What are HS Steps?

You need to convert your steps into HS steps with the convert button on the application.

After clicking the Convert button, you watch the advertisement to the end and convert your automatically saved steps into HS steps that you will use to donate or spend. You must do this every day until 12 at night. So you can repeat this process frequently during the day.

You can remind it by allowing it to send you notifications while using the application. In addition, the application continues to record your steps even when your internet is turned off.

How Can I Donate to the Young Lives (Genc Hayat) Foundation with Help Steps?

You can donate as many HS steps as you want by choosing the Young Lives (Genc Hayat) Foundation from the “Groups I Love” section of your application. You can also follow the foundation to get it to the top. The TL equivalent of the donations made will be calculated and transferred to the foundation via bank.

If you cannot find the Young Lives (Genc Hayat) Foundation in the “Groups I Love” section, you can easily access it from the view all option.

After you click on the Send Steps option, enter the number of steps you want to donate on the page that will appear, and your transaction will be successful.

After donating your steps, you can support the Young Lives (Genc Hayat) Foundation to receive more donations by sharing your donation via social media accounts with the share button.

Invite Your Friends to Earn 50,000 Steps!

You can get more people to donate by sending the Help Steps app to your friends and inviting them to use it too. When your friends start using the application with the invitation code you sent, you will earn 50,000 steps. It is also possible to transfer your steps to your friends. You can also add your friends using the application to your friends list within the application.

We wish you nice walks and happy steps that you can support the children.

“Worker and Child Rights in Seasonal Agriculture” Leaflets are Published!

"Worker and Child Rights in Seasonal Agriculture" Brochures are Published!

As part of our “The Last Stop for Child Labour: Eskişehir!” project where we focus on families and individuals under temporary protection who immigrated to Eskişehir; we continue to meet with children in the seasonal agricultural cycle and their families. Raising awareness of families is one of the primary steps to ensure that children are not working  in conditions that hinder their physical and mental development; and that they can continue their education. 

You can browse our brochures of the awareness raising activities we carried out for more information on topics such as: Who is the child; what is child labor; what does the convention on the rights of the child cover?; How is occupational health and safety ensured? What rights do migrant seasonal agricultural workers have?

Worker and Child Rights in Seasonal Agriculture

(Language: Arabic)

Click to Read

Elsalih Family Video is Published!

"We ask Allah to give them [our children] a good future. We hope Allah won’t show them what we have experienced and seen."

You can watch the story of the Elsalih family, whom we met in our “Last Destination for Child Labor: Eskişehir!” project, in the video below.

Our goal is to make the lives of refugee families a little easier and establish a brighter future where children live safely. Everyone has the right to a lifestyle that respects human dignity, and it is everybody’s responsibility to make it possible. Only in this way can we make a life together possible.

We want to create a better world for millions of displaced people and their children, and we strive to protect their rights and well-being.

Around 80 million people worldwide are displaced. Turkey remains the country hosting the highest number of refugees. According to March 2021 data, more than 3.6 million Syrian nationals and nearly 320,000 international protection status refugees and asylum seekers (including refugees from other nationalities) live in Turkey. The Elsalih family is only one of these families who had to flee from their home due to war and turmoil and took refuge in Turkey.

 
* “The Last Destination for Child Labor: Eskişehir!” The project is supported by the Local Initiative Fund in Turkey (LIFT) within the scope of the “The Community Centers and Local Initiatives Project (CLIP)”, which is co-financed by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and the European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations (ECHO).

From Harvest Field to School: The Story of Ali and Zehra

From Harvest Field to School: The Story of Ali and Zehra

Ali and Zehra are just two of the children we have met during our “Last Stop for Child Labor: Eskişehir!” project. Ali and Zehra, who had to leave their homes and come to Turkey with their families due to the war conditions in Syria in 2017, found themselves living with the realities of seasonal migratory agriculture, just as the thousands of other children living under the same conditions.

Ali and Zehra’s parents are aware of how important it is for their children to receive education at school. However, they said that they have to make a living and the seasonal agriculture already only allows them to work at certain times of the year. Therefore, they regretfully said that they needed Ali and Zehra to help them with the work in the field. The family, who first stayed at Bursa and Antalya as seasonal agriculture workers, are currently working at Eskişehir and wish to permanently stay there because they believe that settling is better than having a tent life. Besides, building a settled life is critical for their children to complete their education lives.

Before crossing paths with our project team;
13-year-old Ali, the oldest child of the house, was working at the tomato field with his parents every day for 11-12 hours. Therefore, he couldn’t continue the education he previously started under these conditions. 11-year-old Zehra, who has never attended school before in her life, was working at the field too. When she was at home, she would take the full responsibility of the house, such as cleaning, washing the clothes and folding and taking care of her siblings.

Ali took an equivalency test, an exam that enables students to continue their education at the accurate level, after the break he had to take due to their migration from Antalya to Eskişehir. With the support of our team, he succesfully passed the exam. He is now enrolled in school and he will start his education from the 8th grade.

Zehra will start her education from the 4th grade. She will proceed with an adaptation class because her Turkish is not sufficient. Moreover, our team provides technical support about EBA TV so that they can follow their classes during the distance education times. Ali and Zehra are now following their online lectures with the support they received, which helps them to improve their Turkish too.

In our project, which lies under the roof of LIFT, our field team gives priority to the family’s school-age children to continue their education wholly and efficiently. The attendance of children to the classes, their school performances, whether they go to the field or not, are all monitored with simultaneous communication conducted with their families and teachers. Meanwhile, the families under temporary protection status in Turkey with children who are unable to attend school, are provided with conditional education assistance.

Ali, who wants to be a doctor in the future, is now very happy that he will go to school instead of the field. Zehra, who wants to be a teacher when she grows up, is extremely excited that she will go to school for the first time. Our “Last Stop for Child Labor: Eskişehir!” project continues so that Ali, Zehra and the hundreds of other children we met and supported, can break the cycle of seasonal agriculture and start a new life where they can get education and realize their dreams.

* “Last Stop for Child Labor: Eskişehir!” project, which is co-funded by “The Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ)” and “European Civil Projection and Humanitarian Aid Operations (ECHO),” is supported by “Local Initiative Fund in Turkey (LIFT)” under the “Community Centres and Local Initiatives Project (CLIP).”