In a small town on Turkey’s border with Syria, 100 refugees have gone ‘full pelt’ to learn, and use shoemaking skills taught in a CARE livelihoods project. In the process, they stand to benefit not only themselves, but also their families, and the town as a whole.
The 100 trainees who live in Yayladagi, in the far south of Hatay region, have completed a four-month training-course, progressing from novices to the point where observers agree most could take jobs as professional creators of quality footwear.
Ali Kaya, CARE Turkey’s Basic Needs Project Manager, explained: ‘This is a traditional shoe-making area of Turkey, but in recent years, perhaps due to increasing mechanisation, there is a smaller number of skilled workers available for the industry.
‘At the same time, because of Yayladagi’s position directly on the border with Syria, there is a community of refugees here. They have struggled to find work, in part because the skills some of them already had are not urgently needed here.
‘This course was designed with these things in mind. It’s about teaching skills to help meet local need, and providing Yayladagi’s Syrian refugee community with what they need to enter the employment market, find jobs, and gain a regular income so they can stand on their own two feet.’
Shoemaking in Action. (Credit: Rory O'Keeffe/CARE)
Ali was speaking at an event to celebrate and showcase the achievements of the 100 workers.
Behind him, in the factory directly opposite the town’s Turkoman Campi refugee camp, the men were split between those cutting leather, sewing uppers to soles, and dyeing and polishing the newest shoes off the production line, and those preparing the space in which they have been training, learning and creating since March this year for the event’s invited attendees.
The guests – Yayladagi’s Deputy Governor Ömer Faruk Yuce; representatives from Hatay’s Mustafa Kemal University; shoemakers and sellers from Antakya and 15 members of Hatay’s chambers of commerce – were here to view the shoes and meet their makers.
Trainee Shardee Awan said: ‘I got involved in this project because I have lived here a long time, over the road. I really like shoe-making.
‘My job is quite early in the process. I have to cut the leather into the right shape, so that it can be worked on to make the shoe. But I have tried everything, all the parts of the process, learned how to do them, and why you do them in this way.
‘I really like the project. I don’t get tired of it, I am very happy to work on this. I am learning, and improving myself.’
Shardee, 25, left his home-town of Latakia, 60km south-west of Yayladagi on the Syrian Mediterranean coast, in 2012. He was at high school, and was unable to complete his education because he had to flee.
He said: ‘I left because fighters came. They caught me and warned me that they would come back. They wanted me to fight. They told me that if I didn’t, they would beat me, then put me in jail where I would be tortured until I agreed to fight.
‘I don’t want to kill people – my own people or any people. It’s really stupid. There is no reason. So instead, I left.
‘In Syria, we were killing each other, but we are all brothers and sisters. We are all human beings, all of us are. We don’t need to kill. This – who we are, our situations – is what our Gods gave us. And God tells us we are all brothers. Allah, the Jewish god, the Christian god, the Hindu gods, the Buddhists. All of them say ‘you are all brothers. All human beings are your brothers.’ They say ‘don’t kill.’ And yet we do kill. It is stupid.
‘I like Yayladagi a lot. It is home to me. I feel I am living in my home. That is a nice feeling. It’s important to have a place you like.
‘It’s a great feeling when you see a completed shoe you have worked on. I take pictures of all the shoes! You go from nothing at the start, to a completed shoe. I really like it. I don’t have a favourite shoe style, every shoe looks good, as long as it is properly made.
‘I want to keep working. That’s my aim for the future: to work here, to keep doing this, in the shoe factory. I want to improve myself more, and be a professional shoe-maker.’
And the importance of working – a central driver of the shoemaking scheme, on which CARE Turkey has partnered with the Yayladagi Municipality – was also stressed by the Municipality’s Deputy Governor Ömer Faruk Yuce, in his address to the trainees.
He said: ‘The aim is to improve the work chances of Syrians. Shoemaking is an area of opportunity, there are jobs here.
‘The population of Yayladagi was 5,000. The refugees have doubled that. So we are helping them to find work. To the refugees here, I say that we did not give you help in this. You worked by your hand. You did everything yourself. It’s not a hand-out, it’s something you have created for yourselves.
‘This project is to improve shoemaking in Yayladagi: you are helping us to improve and to trade in shoes from here to other parts of Turkey. It’s also a humanitarian response, so that families can get into a good position in terms of living and working. Everyone benefits from all our work.’
Trainee Ali Sakali, also from Latakia, highlighted that the project – in which the participants were paid 950 Turkish Lyra (150 USD) per month – benefitted not only those who worked in it, but a wider group. He said: ‘100 people work here. Each of those has a family of 4-5 people. That’s around 500 people benefitting, maybe more. That’s a lot of people. Ten per cent of the refugee population here.
‘We heard about the project when Ali from CARE came to the camp. He said we would learn how to make shoes and get a new job, earn our own money. This really appealed to us. It’s what we needed.
‘I do the final piece of the process, dyeing and shining the shoes. I also do administration work and some of the accounts work, because it’s something I had experience in from my life before here.
‘All we want is to get a job and live as human beings. To stand up, not fall down. We don’t want hand-outs. We want jobs, to earn our money, to be alive.’
Izzet Shem, an Antakya-based shoe-maker and trader, has attended the course as an advisor, offering his expertise to help the trainees.
He said: ‘It’s the first time these people have worked in a shoe factory. Even four months in, anyone would have more to learn. But even so, employers are coming, and they are impressed. These are skilled workers.
‘The shoes here really are perfect. They are very, very good. Especially considering the setting and the circumstances, they are amazing. The trainees really are very talented, and that should be recognised. Look at what they have produced. It’s amazing what they have achieved.
‘There aren’t enough skilled workers in shoe-making in Antakya, so they could hire people from here. Definitely they are good enough. I will follow this up, and try to find jobs for them.
‘Think about all these people have been through, where they now live. They are in a new country, many live in a camp, they have never made shoes before because they had other jobs. But the shoes they make are excellent. I will definitely help people to sell these shoes.
‘In part it’s because I want to help people who need and deserve lives, but it isn’t just that. I care about shoe-making, and these are skilled workers. They are interested, they care and they are good at it. We shouldn’t lose them. My industry will benefit from them. People in general will benefit.
CARE Turkey’s Basic Needs team works to improve housing, water, sanitation and public and shared spaces for Syrian refugees in Southern Turkey, and the Turkish communities which host them. It also provides livelihoods training – delivering life skills including Turkish language courses, and employment-focussed training such as the Yayladagi shoe-making project – benefit refugees and the communities in which they live.
CARE spent 330,000 USD on the Yayladagi initiative, which began in April 2018. The second iteration of the project started in the fall of 2018, with an additional 170,000 USD in funding from the German development agency GiZ, and a new group of 100 trainees, guided this time by 25 of the 100 ‘graduates’ from the first project.
Read more about CARE's work in Turkey.