The Tohum Autism Foundation, together with the Education Reform Initiative (“ERG”) and supported by funds from Turkey’s only national donation program The Sabancı Foundation for Social Development has completed the “Policies and Applications for increasing the Effectiveness of Integration and Integration Solutions” project. With ERG’s partnership, the project aims to provide quality education to not only autistic but all other disabled groups within formal education by way of Integration solutions.
Through the “Policies and Applications for increasing the Effectiveness of Integration and Integration Solutions” pilot project the gap between existing laws and practice seeks to be filled, stakeholders are made of aware of their rights, and children with disabilities are given more opportunities to have education of the same standards as their peers.
Though the legal framework for ‘integration’  education exists, the infrastructure for schools to make this a reality is sometimes insufficient. The general public was made aware of this project by way of providing seminars to education professionals on ‘integration’ and fetes and workshops were held at schools to raise awareness in parents. The project was launched in three of Istanbul’s socio-economically different neighbourhoods in pilot schools and the project’s effectiveness was assessed by an independent institution with fact based methodology.
The final outcome of the project was a model solution which can be applied in Turkey to be presented to decision makers and the general public.