Jane Tilly, sharing her experience in Turkey during a trip with RumiForum:

Jane Tilly

…Jane Tilly and I work on the health research on public programs that serve mostly poor people in the US, so I was really interested in (the trip), as one of the highlights being visits to the hospitals to talk with people. I learnt that Turkey is ahead of the US in terms of all its citizens having access to healthcare. We don’t have that in our country. The fifteen percent of people under age sixty-five don’t have health insurance at all. That was one area that you are doing a little better than we are. But the biggest thing for me was the learning experience since I’ve been involved with the RumiForum which was about on six months or so, something like that.

We had an interfaith dialog on healthcare for people who are dying and I learnt a little bit more; I had known of the Poet Rumi and I had known about Sufism and as like this has been a very great learning experience. And for me, I have done a lot of travel in Europe, in places like Australia, but I haven’t had really the experience being in a place with Muslim- Christian, interesting mixture of Europe-Asia, and I see a lot of value on both in being able to get a better understanding and a lot of touristic experience. I know we have gone to place to place on bus, and talked about but we’ve got a chance to meet a lot of Turkish people and experience the country in a way I think only few other people can. So we are really grateful for that, and I, in addition to loving to learn, I love to give back sometimes. So if there is any way I can teach here or someplace else and get involved in the RumiForum and someway be helpful then I would like to talk about that at some point…