Are you looking for culturally diverse and internationally-focused opportunities for your children? Did your children love their free online language and culture classes with Bridges: Children, Languages, World last semester? Now they can spend the last week of July with our incredible Bridges instructors from Indiana University learning Zulu and Turkish language & culture!

This FREE daytime summer camp was held in two parts: Mornings with Gabbie Hetrick in isiZulu and afternoons with Mehlika Cekic in Turkish. Using full language immersion techniques, our camp has your kids bouncing home sharing games, crafts, song, and dance from South Africa, Turkey, and beyond!


Open to all children in K-6th grade, the Bridges Summer Language Camp ran from July 26 - 30th, 9:30am - 4:30pm (with a one-hour lunch break from 12:30-1:30pm including outdoor recess).


Required Registration is capped at 15 participants!

Preference given to campers that can attend both the morning and afternoon sessions.

Absolutely no previous experience with the language is required, just an interest in learning about new & wonderful languages & cultures!

Instructor Bios



Gabbie Hetrick graduated from Indiana University in Spring of 2021 with a major in Political Science and Minors in Zulu and Sociology. While at Indiana University, studying IsiZulu for all 4 years, she participated in the Bridges program as an IsiZulu instructor teaching elementary students about the Zulu language and culture every Friday. She has travelled to South Africa with her family and for her studies. Gabbie's favorite part of Zulu culture is the importance of song, dance, and colorful clothing and jewelry. She looks forward to sharing her love of the Zulu language and culture with our community this summer.

Mehlika Çekiç is a second year pre-med student at IU Bloomington and is majoring in Neuroscience. Born and raised in the US to Turkish parents, she is a fluent heritage speaker of Turkish, and identifies very closely with Turkish culture in addition to American culture. She has been teaching Turkish to elementary students with the Bridges program for the past two semesters and has loved the experience of being able to aid in creating more internationally minded students in the Bloomington community while sharing her love of the Turkish language and culture at the same time. She is thrilled to be able to play a role in creating culturally aware, open-minded, and confident Turkish speaking students!


Questions? Contact us