HAND in HAND with MOTHERS in GEDIZ HOUSE
In this project, which is carried out every year with a group of women living in the same neighborhood reached through Gündoğdu Contemporary Community Volunteers, club members aimed to empower women by teaching how to knit to make different products with crochet and skewer that have a sales value. Under the leadership of our club members Yıldız Belger, Bergün Kardeş, Figen Özdem and Duygu Yurtseven with other members, besides training them in skills, they established friendship in order to get acquainted with the family problems of theirs in order to find solutions by guiding them and help them to gain self confidence as being a role model. Trainings began on October 19, 2023 and ended on May 9, 2024.
WOMEN’S JOURNEY WITH HER CITIZEN IDENTITY IN THE 100TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE REPUBLIC OF TURKEY
For the commemoration of the 100th anniversary of our Republic, we wanted to renew citizenship awareness by talking about the women rights that the Republic provided, thus drawing attention to the erosion of citizen identity as we enter our second century and to support women who could not benefit from their citizenship rights.
A symposium is organized at Konak Municipality Türkan Saylan Cultural Center on October 24, 2023 aiming to renew the citizenship awareness in the audience, thus increasing the awareness of women’s legal achievements during the Republic period, confronting the inability of women to use their legally acquired rights and raising the level of awareness in society to ensure gender equality, so that women can claim their rights.
President Nazlı Yolaç, Board Member Benal İnceer, Project Working Group Member Özge Yılmaz and Duygu Yurtseven started the project preparations on August 1, 2023 to determine the speakers and target audience.
It was decided to provide an integrated, systematic flow of information on the topics discussed from different legal, psychological and philosophical perspectives.
Club President, Atty. Nazlı Yolaç, under the title of “Women’s Right to Speak” delivered information that women’s rights were limited in the pre-Republic period and their achievements in the fields of women’s rights and the right to speak in family, society and politics in Republic period.
Club member, Clinical Psychologist Prof.Dr. Benal İnceer, under the title of “Being a Female Citizen of the Republic” delivered a speech covering to think once again about the gains of the Republic and Women’s Identity and to renew the awareness of citizenship, what the citizen identity brings to women.
Prof.Dr. Solmaz Zelyut delivered enlightening information in the field of philosophy on how gender inequality takes place in mentality and language established patterns under the title “Gender of Word”.
The target audience was determined as women living in areas with limited socioeconomic opportunities and women who take an active role in Izmir women”s associations in order to provide them with reminder information to organize similar trainings. Two of our scholars were among the participants.
A power point presentation under the title “Inspiring Women” of 50 Turkish women who have achieved pioneering successes and thus inspire what women can achieve, was prepared and supported by short stories and photographs of their successes before the symposium started.We tried to provide a pleasant environment with a suitable background music. There was a buffet of beverages. Some of them was sponsored by club member Özge Yılmaz. The rest was through the club bugdet. Club member Buket Karadeveci was responsible for providing beverages and delivering them to the venue and also transfers of participants with limited opportunities attending from long distances.
We donated three saplings for each speaker to the TEMA Foundation’s100th anniversary forest to express our gratitude for them. Sapling donation certificates were presented by the Club President Nazlı Yolaç who sponsored the donations. We preferred to donate saplings for a friendly environment.
MENTEE – MENTOR
The Menti-Mentor project, which was launched last term with the aim of supporting the independence of scholars through group mentoring, helping them to set personal/professional goals for themselves and to realize them, was planned as monthly meetings for 5 months this year.
The group met each other at the first meeting on November 17, 2023. In addition to 4 mentees (Şerife Akgül, Ozan Umut Kara, Zeynep Kırmaz, Damla Kızılgöz) who were in the group from last year, a new scholar (Said Öztürk) joined the group. Expectations and concerns about the programme were shared. Programme goals were identified as improvement of focusing skills, time management and coping with stress. Until the next meeting, it was planned to prepare a personal example about the lack of focusing skills and to prepare a short-term plan for individual goals.
Şerife Akgül, Ozan Umut Kara, Zeynep Kırmaz, Damla Kızılgöz, Ezgi İrem Nakış, Said Öztürk and Ergün Canpolat attended the second meeting on December 16, 2023. Individual development goals were discussed. It was seen that the goals were mostly related to the transition period to professional life; internship preparations, foreign language development and preparation for exams were among the most prominent goals. Benal İnceer talked about methods to improve focusing skills. The fellows were asked to work on focusing until the next meeting and to share their experiences at the meeting.
Şerife Akgül, Damla Kızılgöz and Said Öztürk attended the meeting where their personal experiences on focusing skills were discussed on January 6, 2024.
On February 17, 2024 Şerife Akgül, Damla Kızılgöz and Said Öztürk attended the meeting where mentor Özge Yılmaz made a presentation on time management and the personal problems of the mentees were discussed.
On March 23, 2024 Şerife Akgül, Damla Kızılgöz and Said Öztürk gathered with the members of Göztepe Soroptimist Club during the project development workshop. The scholars had lunch with the club members and after lunch, they had a meeting on the evaluation of the programme in general with mentee Benal İnceer.
FELT WORKSHOP
Conservation and Development of City Values Association of İzmir organizes activities for youngsters aged from 6 to 18, yielding their interest in science and knowledge. These activities take place in a primary school which belongs to Konak Municipality and which is restored by the association and named as KONTAK Innovative Learning Center. The center ensures that disadvantaged groups in the community benefit from these opportunities.
We collaborated with the Association, which offers a felt-working course for women to support them. The course program is scheduled for two hours a day and lasted four weeks starting on January 8, 2024 and ending on January 29, 2024. Club members Yıldız Belger and Bergün Kardeş trained the group teaching how to make the products from felt. Techniques for producing objects such as bags, glass and tablet cases and boutonnieres using felt were taught. By providing a hand skill, we supported 15 women to design and produce different products.
NON-VIOLENT FAMILY
A “Non-Violent Family Interaction Group” workshop was held for the mothers of children receiving educational support at the Buca/Gediz home of Gündoğdu Contemporary Community Volunteers Association, the executor of the “Our Home” project, of which Göztepe Soroptimist Club is a project partner. The periodic meetings, which aim to help families learn the right communication methods to support family communication problems, started on January 15, 2024. With the trainings planned by our member Clinical Psychologist Prof. Dr. Benal İnceer, it was aimed to create a non-violent family environment with the change of thought, approach and behavior that will enable them to overcome communication problems. 12 women participated in the six-week trainings, which ended on March 4, 2024.
Tea and cake were served at the closing meeting which was attended by the project coordinator Benal İnceer and President Nazlı Yolaç, as well as Ayten Tekişalp, Figen Özdem, Seher Sever, Yıldız Belger, Bergün Kardeş and Merve Çelebi. The cookies prepared by the participating women were highly appreciated. The women were presented with evil eye bead bracelets so that they would remember what they learned in this project every time they looked at them and primroses for taking the time to attend the trainings and making the effort to adopt the training. They thanked project coordinator Benal by presenting a handmade necklace as their handicraft.
GETTING ACQUAINTED with BLACK and WHITE NOTES
The piano course, which was attended by 6 children aged 6 to10 from Eşrefpaşa House, was held in 7 lessons between February 25, 2024 and May 6, 2024. The students of the American Collegiate Institute in Izmir guided this project as their social responsibility workshop. Under the leadership of their teacher Ms. Değer Sırdaş, the children learned how to play the piano. In the first lesson, they practiced the notes and sang with piano accompaniment. They learned the notes, the key of G and F, how to write notes and where the notes are located on the piano keys. They wrote the notes of a piece of music. Afterwards, they played the piano by the notes.
JOURNEY of the SISTERS
On Saturday, March 23, 2024, at the “JOURNEY OF SISTERS” workshop held at the Dostlar Condominium in Bornova, opinions were exchanged with the aim of internalizing Soroptimism, creating synergy and realizing our most efficient walk to our future where we will find strength from our unity.
The workshop participants were encouraged to discuss different topics as; the benefits of Soroptimism; their own contributions to Soroptimism; evaluate themselves as Soroptimists; the most important problems of women and girls and to create potential projects as a group.
3 project proposals which are: * Working with the spouses of women living in areas with limited socioeconomic opportunities * Carrying self-confidence studies under the topic of gender inequality with young women studying in education faculties so that to raise awareness to future teachers fot them to shed light on the next generations * Encouraging young people to enter politics by implementing a Women in Politics project were discussed.
The workshop was organized by Project Coordinators Benal İnceer and Özge Yılmaz and was attended by Filiz Tengiz Sefer, the Turkish Union Secretary and Regional Representative, Club members Nazlı Yolaç, Benal İnceer, Özge Yılmaz, Yıldız Belger, Bergün Kardeş, Buket Karadeveci, Begüm Huntürk, İnci Menemencioğlu, Demet Kumova, Merve Çelebi, Zeynep Edes, Şerife Eren, Muhayyel İzmiroğlu, Duygu Yurtseven, Nihal Akgünlü, Fatma Boya, Ümran Özer, candidate member Ayla Coşkun and scholars Damla Kızılgöz, Said Öztürk and Şerife Aygül.
KEEP OUR ENVIRONMENT CLEAN
Due to World Environment Day, we planned a project themed “Let’s Keep Our Environment Clean.” For the project aiming at preventing environmental pollution, we came together with club members before the Friendship Meeting in May and realized paper folding. We folded waste papers such as magazines and brochures into a form of small baskets with a special folding technique for the use of putting nut waste. In order to increase the number of baskets, members continued folding process at home.
Nearly a thousand baskets, prepared in a size that can be squeezed and carried in a bag, were distributed to picnickers in the Inciraltı Urban Forest of Izmir Metropolitan Municipality on June 5, 2024. We explained the purpose of the baskets and handed out eight to ten of them to each person. We also left a large number of them in the kiosks nearby, telling them to distribute them to the people who buy the nuts they sell.
By enabling the secondary use of waste paper, we have realized a different work in terms of environmental awareness through recycling and awareness-raising work in terms of protecting our environment as clean as it should be.
MY DENTIST without BORDERS is BY MY SIDE
At Hamdi Dalan Special Education Application School, where mentally and severely physically disabled children, most of whom are autistic and have down syndrome, received treatment on preventive and therapeutic dentistry practices which were carried out for two full days on October 24-25, 2024, with the participation of three other schools in the district.
Twelve Dentists, one Dental Technician/Nurse and one Technical Officer, who are members of the Association of Dentistry Without Borders, voluntarily and without any charge, created a temporary clinic at the venue where children with disabilities receive education.
Candidate member Dentist Prof. Dr. Figen Sevgican was the contact person with the project partner Dentistry Without Borders Association. With the coordination of the project partner together with the school administrators, permission for the project was obtained from the Izmir Provincial Department of Health. Then, as a matter of procedure, approval was obtained from the District Department of National Education and the District Governor’s Office.
The day before the project was launched, officials from the Association of Dentistry Without Borders arrived at the School with all their equipment and materials and set up the clinic. During the next two days, approximately 108 children were checked for their dental needs and their needs were determined. Each child was directed to the dentist who would perform the treatments such as filling, removal, cleaning of tartar. When conditions requiring more complicated treatment or surgical intervention were detected, they were sent to dental hospitals and dentists who were also volunteers of the association.
Our club presented bracelets for the children, which made them surprisingly happy. Dentists and assistant health personnel from the Association of Dentistry Without Borders with their caring and patient approach, were appreciated by the children. The happiness and gratitude of the mothers who came to accompany their disabled children was worth seeing.
Club President Nazlı Yolaç, Vice President Begüm Huntürk, members Aysu Benlioğlu, Gül Gürses, Merve Çelebi and candidate member Figen Sevgican were present at the school during the project implementation.
