Eighteen-year-old Istanbul college student Züleyha Çakır likes music and going out with friends. She may seem like a typical Turkish teenager with her dark hair and eyes, but what makes her stand out is that she is an entrepreneur.

Çakır and four friends – along with the help of a unique school technology unit – founded a company last December selling a novel magnetic device to tie shoelaces for time-strapped teenagers. But what makes her story remarkable is that Züleyha is an orphan. Now, this Istanbul-based project is giving her and her friends a chance to excel in innovation.

Founded in 1863, the Darüşşafaka School has provided educational opportunities to orphans through their secondary and high school education. As a non-profit institution, it operates solely on donations.

Çakır and her friends meet frequently at Darüşşafaka's technology and science center on Istanbul's European side. Opened in June 2013, it is the first of its kind among Turkish high schools to provide a space for innovation.

In its first term, teachers worked with 167 students. Paired together, students are asked to come up with a business idea and present it to a jury. Meltem Ceylan Alibeyoğlu, the project manager of the college, described how 30 selected students underwent further training on entrepreneurship in the second term, especially after Darüşşfaka partnered with technology giant Intel and Istanbul-based Özyeğin University's Fit Startup Factory.

In this center, students conduct "exciting" experiments based on the theory they learn. "What we teach during class is abstract, but now we have an energy section within this lab. After the class, students can test what they learn," said Aynur Karabulut, a senior science teacher.

Adding well-equipped and operated labs is expected to help to increase Turkey's rank on PISA tests, the international standard for assessing education organized by the Paris-based Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. The test is held every three years and assesses 15-year-olds' mathematics, reading and science knowledge. In 2012, Turkey ranked 44th (out of 65) on this test.

"Impediments in our education prevent us from being successful on PISA tests. Our education system has not been structured around experiencing knowledge directly though labs. What we aim with this center is to overcome this," Alibeyoğlu said.

Darüşşafaka science and technology center reflects technologically advanced countries that have restructured their education system to emphasize testing and experimentation. Moreover, two other schools have since opened science and technology centers similar to Darüşşafaka's.

In addition to science experiments, the second aim of the center is to provide students with the chance to form clubs related to technology, including robotics and entrepreneurship. The idea of Çakır's magnet-tie was born at that center through the activities of an entrepreneurship club. Çakır and her friends required negotiation skills to put the idea into reality, so they hit the road to visit wholesalers in Eminönü, a historical part of Istanbul where many shops are located. "Those wholesalers were surprised to see young girls at their shops, bargaining to get large sums of shoelaces," Çakır recalled. Once the ties are purchased, Çakır and her friends returned use the center's facilities to turn them into "magnet-ties."

"We sold our first batch of products to teachers. Profits will be donated to the school's budget," she said.

Çakır aspires to be an engineer, and the skills she acquired through last year's program will have an everlasting effect on her. "I believe I can do something related to entrepreneurship after graduation," Çakır said.