UTAMARA Women's Meeting Center held a folklore training camp with the participation of 15 students and teachers. The camp was organized with the slogan "Let's discover our own identity with our culture" and was held between 21 and 23 October.

Various activities were held in the camp, which saw the participation of folklorists and teachers from Duisburg, Hagen and Cologne.

The group, which started the daily program with sports, continued its studies with folklore education from Botan and Gimgim (Varto) regions.

Walks, art around the fire and discussions about Kurdish cinema were among the activities held. Young women said that art and culture should involve more women.

Xezal Ertaş (32), who attended the camp from Cologne, said that they carried out their folk dance activities under the roof of TEV-ÇAND. Expressing that they always keep folk dances alive so that they are not forgotten, Xezal Ertaş added: “Our main goal is to hold on to our culture in places like Europe. Also, to pass them on to the next generation. It is to transfer it to the next generation without breaking it from its essence as much as possible, without changing its roots.”

Xezal Ertaş said that folk dances are not just about figures but reflect the structure of the country's geography. She pointed out that women showed the most interest in this wide-ranging art.

She said that there were participants from different age categories in the folklore education, and added that the way cultural education is given from children to young people has changed. Ertaş said: “We teach children in an easy way, then we elaborate further when we teach young people. And we go even further by doing big projects, camps. We train teachers ourselves.”

Ertaş said that the camp participants were chosen with a focus on Germany's North Rhine-Westphalia state, and added that women-oriented seminars were also given in the camp besides folk dances. “We currently have a few camps in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, but our camps are mostly for beginners. Since there is a lot of interest in folk dances coming from women, we kept it a bit limited and organized a 2-day camp for younger students. We also sang strans and kilams with the little children. We learned the stories of the songs. We held seminars with friends here. We focused more on women-oriented issues. We had such a nice few days. We came here in three groups, three teams. There was a team from Cologne, one from Hagen, and one from Duisburg. The team I'm in is called Govenda Amara.”