Local Dissemination Event in Eskisehir
On 06th July 2021, The Eksi 25 Association organized a local dissemination event of the Partibridges project, in order to inform people about our work. People from several organizations attended the event.
Mehmet Ali Tümkaya, a young volunteer of the Minus 25(Eksi 25) Association talked about the project generally and informed people about what is Partibridges, who are the partners, what Partibridges has done, and what is the part of the Minus 25 in this project.
After that, Büşra Onsoy, a youth professional in Minus 25 told participants about P2 and presented the web documentary. She briefly talked about what other partner countries have done. Participants watched the premiere of the web documentary and watched the full documentary of the Turkish team.
Selim Öztop, social worker and branch manager from Eskişehir Metropolitan Municipality told about his experience with young people during the pandemic and drew us a portrait of young people’s situation in Eskişehir during the pandemic. His associate Özdemir Uçak, also a social worker and works at the Youth Center of Eskişehir Metropolitan Municipality told about young people who communicated with the Youth Center during the pandemic. He told us what they asked from the Youth Center and what they have been through during the pandemic. Both Mr. Öztop and Mr. Uçak were amazed by the work we have done and both asked us to make workers in their institution watch the web documentary to know more about young people and their situation. Mr. Öztop added, “I wish we could have worked with you on this amazing project!”
We shared the results of the research we have done during the pandemic about young people and what their problems are, how they are feeling and what they would like to change. Showing the results, young volunteers agreed to most of it and told about their problems also. Young volunteers were eager to tell about the pandemic from their point of view and a volunteer, student from Anatolian University Şamil Kandemir told: “I wish someone would ask me about those too, thank you all Partibridges partners for thinking about young people and act for it, being proactive for it.” One of the problems pointed out in the discussion and also in the research was about online education. Two of the participants, Asst. Prof. Ayşegül E. Çevirgen and Primary class teacher Tugay Kaçak told us from the teachers’ point of view about the topic. Ms. Çevirgen told us that Online education is not something they wanted and told us about her opinions on the topic. She also answered the question of Tuna C. Ünver, a student from Anatolian University Faculty of Law, who asked about homework. After Mr. Tuna said that teachers give a lot of homework, Ms. Çevirgen answered: We are not glad that we give a lot of homework but to keep your formal education going and make you feel like you are still a part of the community and not alone, we had to do that. Mr. Kaçak said that young people are right but since there is no face-to-face education, teachers had to give homework to keep young people busy.
Ms. Polat, who is head of the child rights commission in the Eskişehir Bar Association, talked about the first P2 project and told us about how good it is to find young people from disadvantaged neighborhoods and increase their participation. She also wanted to make intern lawyers watch the web documentary because they also are young and had difficulties during the pandemic. Ms.Polat said that making interns watch the web documentary can make them feel that they are not alone and many young people face almost the same problems. Interns from Eskişehir Bar Association, Ms. Şamat and Ms. Algül also agreed with Ms. Polat and Ms. Algül said “First time since the pandemic began, I felt like I was not alone!”
Ms. Akkoyun, the representative of the Education and Training Support Association, told us about how good it is to build bridges between formal and informal education and added that she will tell this study to her association. Social Worker from Mental Health for Everyone Association, Ali Yılmaz also pointed out this aspect of Partibridges. Young volunteers took part in every discussion, told their ideas to the decision-makers, and thanked the Partibridges because we gave them a chance to say something about their lives.
Cüneyt Elbastı from Haller Entrepreneurship Group, an initiative in Eskişehir who also makes Erasmus+ projects proposed to do projects about youth participation with Minus 25. Gülnaz Tümkaya, a volunteer from the General Directorate of Land Registry and Cadastre volunteered to involve projects about young people and she added: “I have 4 nephews and this presentation with all this research and interviews made me feel like now I have begun to understand them better.”
After the meeting, participants took the useful links. They have the links to Partibridges website, the web documentary, and the social media account of Partibridges.