LOCALIZATION AND CAPACITY BUILDING

The February 6 Earthquakes demonstrated the significance of a locally coordinated civil society including in disaster response. We supported life for development of local humanitarian response capacity.

In 2023, we accelerated our localisation efforts and worked to strengthen local capacity and enable communities to produce solutions for their own needs..

TRAININGS

In 2023 we organized 142 sessions with groups including non-governmental institutions, bar associations, social service directorates general, and municipalities. We reached 2,279 people with our face-to-face and online trainings .

In our efforts to strengthen the capacity of civil society organisations, we provided mentoring support to 19 civil society organisations from 16 provinces with limited capacity to access financial and technical resources.

Within the framework of our child safeguarding capacity development activities, we provided child safeguarding training to 10 non-governmental organizations and 3 public institutions in 2023; We reached 170 people with these trainings.

Our digital learning platform hayatadestek.360 became an important resource in Turkish for humanitarian workers that served at the disaster region following the February 6 Earthquakes. 5,424 people benefited from our 13 different trainings

Child Safeguarding Training

13
Institutions

170
People

Institutional Capacity Building Trainings

736
People

NGO Capacity Building Activities

19
NGO

hayatadestek.360 Trainings

5,424
People

Child Safeguarding Implementation Guide

We published our Child Safeguarding Practice Guide that aims to present a roadmap to institutions working with children and give practical information on child safeguarding mechanisms. The Guide contains information and sample applications that will lay the groundwork for understanding the issue of child safeguarding.

 COORDINATION NETWORKS AND ADVOCACY

Members of the Localization Advocacy Group (LAG) that include Support to Life established Local Humanitarian Forum (LHF) with the aim to integrate local non-governmental organizations and civilian networks to the structure of the international humanitarian coordination established in the aftermath of February 6 Earthquakes. We started working with our LHF representatives in Adıyaman, Hatay, Kahramanmaraş, and Malatya. Hosted and secretariat teamed by Support to Life, LHF has 73 members at the national level and a wide stakeholder network at the local level, including NGOs and networks working in the four provinces most affected by the earthquake.

We were one of the national NGOs that were co-executors within the OCHA coordination mechanism. We assumed co-executive role at child protection sub-working group, which aimed to coordinate emergency needs in the disaster area at the sectoral level.

We continued to work actively in the networks of Disaster Platform, Localisation Advocacy Group (YSG) and Refugee Council of Turkey (TMK), of which we were one of the founders.

 GENDER EQUALITY ACTIVITIES

We organized ‘Strengthening Women's Access to Justice (Rights and Services); I am a Woman I Have Rights’ program facilitator training in İzmir with participation of 21 female facilitators from 14 institutions. We updated our program guide and opened to access on our website.

With Adolescent Girls Empowerment Program (AGEP) and Adolescent Boys Support Program (ABSP) we provided safe spaces for adolescent children and young people to access correct and reliable information in their growth and development periods.

In our Parent Empowerment Programmes, we organised information sessions for parents/caregivers on topics such as positive parenting, communication between parents, supporting the healthy development of children, and raising privacy awareness in children.

Gender Mainstreaming Trainings

79
Institutions

Adolescent Girls Empowerment Program and Adolescent Boys Support Program sessions

3,753
children

Parent Empowerment Programs

2,s573
adults

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“We discussed physical, psychological, and digital violence. We learned we could complain without fearing anyone. It is especially important for women to talk without getting shamed. Here there is a lot of discrimination between girls and boys. They say “He is a boy, he can do it” but I will be able to explain to the next generation that this is not right.”

Semra, 14 years old, Kahramanmaraş

Support to Life in Ukraine

The continuing crisis in Ukraine lead to the risk that the vulnerabilities of people affected by the war would become permanent. We continued to provide technical support to local organizations carrying out humanitarian response in Ukraine and surrounding countries in 2023 in order to ensure they can carry out more effective, accountable and efficient activities. With our strategic partner Diakonie Katastrophenhilfe, we supported 18 partners in 5 countries including Ukraine.