Pinar Aparci's mother, Nazo Aparci, shows the women how to navigate Etsy.
Posted: Tuesday, April 7, 2015 12:00 am
For Pinar Arpaci, just thinking about the two Turkish women she helped earn college degrees still gives her goosebumps.
It began back in 2011 when Arpaci, graduate student in education, created a program called Prodigy Stream. The program aims to empower women living in Istanbul, Turkey.
Prodigy Stream allows the women to sell their homemade crafts on the online site, Etsy, to provide revenue for their families. By selling their products online, the women are exposed to a much more global market than if they were to only sell their products at the Bazaar.
Typically, the participants are able to earn about $488 per month, which they can then spend on education for themselves and their children.
“The project is more related to teaching the participants entrepreneurial skills more than how to make things because they are already talented people but they need help selling their products,” Arpaci said.
The women’s talents include glassblowing, knitting and making jewelry. Many of the women involved in the project are stay-at-home moms wanting to put skills they already have to use.
Arpaci said even though the program mainly helps women, men are allowed to join as well if need is demonstrated.
The project began with about 20 participants, but has grown to incorporate more than 70 people.
“They were pretty discouraged at the beginning and we needed to prove that it actually works and that people could actually do this,” Arpaci said. “I actually talked with them on Skype about every weekend at the beginning.”
Arpaci said the project has allowed her to develop strong personal ties with the women involved. She frequently talks with the women, either on the phone or online.
Arpaci has also enlisted in the help of her family to make the project a reality. She said her father was able to find people willing to donate computers to some of the women, and even went to the women’s homes and installed the computers for them.
Her mother, Nazo Arpaci, works as the main coordinator in the field and teaches the women how to use the technology to sell their products and works as a mentor for the women.
The women also rely on each other, helping teach each other and work out problems together. Some of the participants who started when the project began even act as mentors for the newbies, making the program self-sustainable, Arpaci said.
After Arpaci told Ana-Paula Correia about the project, she became instantly interested. In 2013, Arpaci and Correia wrote a paper about the project and shared it at the European Conference on Educational Research in Istanbul.
“I’m interested in educating people to become entrepreneurs and not so much in the sense of becoming a business person, but in the sense that if you encounter a complex problem, you can find a way to solve it,” Correia said. “They look at relationships and invent things that nobody else thought of before. Your ideas don’t just stay in the idea phase, they go beyond that.”
Correia said she was especially excited about the project because it allowed the women to sell their products online without the use of a middleman, so the majority of the profit would go to them.
Correia wasn’t the only one impressed with Arpaci’s project. While teaching an advanced instructional design course, Sally Shaver Dubois, lecturer in education and kinesiology, learned about Prodigy Stream and was attracted to its unique offerings.
“I always try to encourage my students to think outside the classroom and that is exactly what Pinar is doing,” DuBois said. “She’s not in it for the money at all, she just does it because she really wants to help.”
After having success with Prodigy Stream, Correia and Arpaci are currently working on proposing another project in West African countries that applies the same learning opportunities to women in another location with a different set of skills.
“The intent is to educate and to become independent, which is at the true core of being an entrepreneur,” Correia said.
To check out Prodigy Stream’s products, type in “Emek Pinari” into Etsy, or click here.
