Text Box: About Ersin Öztoycan Text Box: I was born in 1963 and raised in the UK, where I grew up with the cultural influence of my Turkish Cypriot background. Having married at a very young age; soon after secondary school, the greater part of my life was devoted to bringing up my young family. The difficulties began when it was established that two of my three children were dyslexic, which not only explained the tantrums and mood-swings they were experiencing but also the bitter reality behind their confusion and frustration. Luckily London had a well-established foundation set for dealing with children with learning difficulties (even if they didn’t use the word dyslexia) allowing me to best serve my children’s special needs. But this all changed when we moved to Northern Cyprus in 1996 and found that there was not a single source of information or assistance available to us there, with the added problem of my second child being expected to continue her education in English and Turkish, which became impossible due to the teaching staff’s lack of knowledge and experience in this field. As a result, I had no option but to seek assistance through other means, which led to the realization that Turkey, with its population of 70 million people, did not have an established organ providing such assistance to families of children with special needs (Dyslexia). Ultimately, I found that the only way I could help my child was to educate myself, which led to me completing the Hornsby Diplomacy Course on Specific Learning Difficulties (Dyslexia) in 2001. Whilst studying for the course, I was also in the process of setting up my own association, and with support from the European, Cyprus and Scottish Dyslexia Association’s I establish the North Cyprus Dyslexia Association (NCDA), because I did not want other parents to go through the same traumatic experiences .