The Vocational Training Center at the city of Mare’, northern rural Aleppo, is conducting free educational and vocational training courses for the city’s young men and women, under the auspice of the city’s local council and the Turkish Ministry of Education.

The project aims to empower young people and activate their social role, through offering them training in several fields, which will help them realize better opportunities at the labor market, according to what Issam al-Saleh, the Official of the Vocational Education at the center, has told Enab Baladi.

Al-Saleh added saying that the Center, opened last July, offers vocational and educational courses in different fields and covers a variety of professions, including electricity and solar systems-related crafts, as well as graphic design, in addition to Turkish language courses for men and women teachers in the city of Mare’.

The center also offers young women courses in different fields, including sewing, making sweets and pastries, as well as hairdressing. The center is expected to start illiteracy eradication courses soon.

According to al-Saleh, the courses are completely for free and that trainees receive an allowance of one dollar for every day they spend at the center, pointing out that the trainees are awarded a certificate accredited by the Turkish Ministry of Education.

The application for the advertised training courses requires several conditions, the most important of which is that the applicant must be a resident of the town of Mare, whether displaced or of the city’s original inhabitants, and if the beneficiary is a displaced person, he/she must be a resident of the area where the training is to be conducted since a month at least.

Mohammad Najar, one of the graphic design trainees at the Vocational Training Center, told Enab Baladi, that he benefited a lot from the courses he attended, the duration of which is 48 hours, pointing out that he wishes to find a convenient job opportunity, so he would not be dependent on society.

The Turkish Ministry of Education Active in Northern Syria

The Turkish Ministry of Education has opened several vocational training centers in northern Syria since last July, which function under the areas’ local councils. The centers aim to train young men and women on various crafts.

The ministry has already started similar centers in Azaz, Suran, Mare’, Akhtarin and other cities and towns in the northern and eastern parts of Aleppo.

Turkey has been fundamentally present in all the service-related sectors in the northern countryside of Aleppo governorate, the repercussions of which appeared at different dimensions, including education, healthcare and services.

However, there has been a spontaneous resistance through which Northern Syria has been trying to preserve the original cultural traits of the area.

As for the official education, Turkey has full control over the educational process in the areas it directly runs in northern Syria, even though the curricula taught there are similar to the ones resorted to by the “Interim Government,” which are a modified version of the Syrian regime’s Ministry of Education’s curricula.