Our mission is to provide hope and beauty through social circus, music and arts for the most vulnerable children effected by conflicts and war
Sirkhane Social Circus School:
Sirkhane is a social circus school founded in 2012 in a region where it is difficult to be a child. Sirkhane’s mission is to provide safe, friendly and embracing environment for children, who are effected by conflicts. We replace their damaged childhood with joy and enrich the children’s imagination using magic of social circus pedagogy. Children have the opportunity to collaborate and form friendships with one other, beyond gender, social and cultural differences. In doing so, they manifest peace, harmony, open mindedness and cheerfulness in their local and global communities. Sirkhane is carrying out activities in Turkey and Iraq serving children through Sirkhane centers located in Mardin province and to rural areas of Mardin province through mobile units.
Our impact
Sirkhane is a home which welcomes children from Turkey, Syria and iraq
By offering children and youth social circus, music and complimentary activities, we are proposing an alternative way of engaging refugee and displaced youth in education through non-formal playful means. Social circus helps to engage and harmonize children from different backgrounds. Social circus is an effective tool for releasing traumas and discharging the energy that builds up in young people forced to live in conflict zones.
500,000+ children
Hundreds of thousands of chIldren Impacted
Sirkhanes – offers a safe, creative space for Syrian and Iraqi refugee children, as well as local children and youth. The centers offers activities and lessons including but not limited to painting, music, clownery, handicrafts, analog photography and darkroom, juggling, acrobatics, and dance with local and international volunteer artists and trainers.
4+2 locations and units
Four centers + two mobIle unIts
The centers are currently at capacity, serving around 300 children daily and since 2012 reached out more than 500.000 children through festival, events and workshops through mobile units.
9+ years
years of servIng communItIes
Sirkhane strongly believes that every child deserves to have their basic rights as described in UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. No matter who they are, where they live, what their parents do, what language they speak, what their religion is, whether they are a boy or girl, what their cultural background is, whether they have a disability, whether they are rich or poor, they should be treated fairly and equally
To keep the sparks of childhood alive
Why do we do this?
We try to prolong the childhood of those children who had to grow up very quickly, due to harsh circumstances that they experience on a daily basis. We work in the areas where it is difficult to be a child and to remain a child. Socio-cultural forces in such communities dictates a child, to grow up fast, stop smiling and dive deeper into stereotypical gender roles. We are a non-political, non-ideological and non-religious organization serving free in charge in places where the aforementioned forces could pressure children and adults to give up their childhood and get involved with numbers, difficulties of life and be an adult sooner than they need to.
How do we do this?
We take chidldren and their problem seriously. Our organization structure applies child safeguarding policies. We are facilitating access to specialised protection and other welfare services for Syrians and non-Syrian refugees in Turkey. Existing services include EU-supported social welfare and education schemes such as the Emergency Social Safety Net Program (ESSN) or the Conditional Cash Transfer for Education Program (CCTE), which support parents in sending their children to school. Sirkhane also educates youth trainers called Circus Heroes, allowing them to become trainers for their community. Through educating trainers amongst the youth and young adults, the act of social art education becomes an integral aspect of community building. Working as a trainer gives young people a feeling of meaningfulness in their everyday life, and provides them with an opportunity to gain work experience and thus improve their opportunities for employment in the future..
How Can you help out?
We always need your support in order to keep our school running. There are various ways that you can contribute to our programs.
Volunteer opportunItIes
You can volunteer for us and teach our children how to fly
Make a DonatIon
You can also make a tax-deductible donation to our organization.
Our Programs
Sirkhane
The social circus is a playful, joyful and laughter-based form of art. It’s a pedagogical tool that promotes the participation and empowerment of children and young people who are in personal or social risk. Workshops on different skills such as juggling, acrobatics, aerials, clowning, theater, pyramids are very important to teach children new ways of thinking, creating and playing while expanding their social environment. Training social circus disciplines and entails the basic element of fun and joy. While learning circus disciplines children and young people also have opportunity to develop life skills such as group dynamics, adopting universal values, improving coordination and concentration, developing a healthy personality and healthy social communication skills.
Müzikhane
Müzikhane (House of Music in Turkish and Persian), is a social musical school based in Mardin Province, located in the south east of Turkey along the border with Syria. Initiated by San Francisco-Based composer, Sahba Aminikia as part of Flying Carpet Festival in 2018, the school continues to grow to become a cultural learning center for vulnerable children. Müzikhane aims to provide world-class cultural and artistic opportunities to vulnerable children in the same region, while also allowing the magic of their music to spread around the world to places where music and beauty are needed most. We connect artists from all around the world to our children, and they learn from those who have been through horrendous experiences and still keep the fire of hope burning in their hearts.
DARKROOM
darkroom is an empowering program directed by Syrian artist Serbest Salih, who is a refugee himself and finds love in teaching art of photography to children of deprived areas. The project equips children with inexpensive, pinhole andsimple analogue cameras, teaches them the basics of composition and visual arts and how to develop, print and achieve results out of their own art. The children are encouraged to take photos of their own surroundings, and capture the innocence and the beauty inside their own lives. Serbest also teaches them how to develop their photos, print them and makes exhibitions of their art; a full cycle of artistic experience.
Mobile Programs
FlyIng CARPET FESTIVAL
Flying Carpet is a volunteer-based collective of world-class musicians, artists, and visionaries who believe in the power of music as a catalyst for positive change in the lives of children. The Flying Carpet Festival is a festival and a learning platform for artists and children, alike, to create a harmonious experience through music, light, beauty, and truth. We organize festivals specializing in forward thinking design, music and art dedicated towards educating children who need it most. We select musicians, circus and visual artists, and visionaries from all over the world, with the common goal of creating the best possible artistic educational experience for the communities in need.
As featured on TED.com:
GALAXI
We may not be able to travel through the whole galaxy, but we may well travel through all of Mardin inside “Galaxy”. Let us introduce Galaxy, our Mobile Circus Unit that has trail through rural areas of Mardin. Galaxy’s mission is to bring child protection services such as prevention of child marriages and child labor, prevention of domestic violence, access to educational opportunities, support for releasing trauma, teaching children’s rights through social circus shows and workshops, laughter, games, puppetry, magic and music is at our hands to make all that happen.
FlyIng LIbrary
Sirkhane flying library is a mobile educational, child friendly container that lands on places where children don’t have access to inspiring environments and educational resources. It flies from one location to another with children books, handicrafts, circus, films, educational and joyful activities. Flying library stays in the same location at least a year until it completes it’s mission. Then keeps flying to places where it’s needed most. By bringing together the two most fundamental rights of every child, education and play, flying library carries out psychosocial activities and cultural improvement at locations where children has been through geographical, political, social and economical struggle.
Partnership:
Current partnership
implemented by:
Previous partnerships:
Project carries out to combat child labor in agricultural areas in the Black Sea region (Samsun-Ordu-Giresun) with the partnership of “Ferrero valuable agricultural”. Check for details click.
Partners:
Role Models:
US Partner
Member of caravan circus
