Project Summary
Grantee	: Women Center Foundation (KAMER)
Purpose	: Raising awareness about women’s rights and rights of persons with disabilities and encourage their participation in the society
Location	: Diyarbakir, Mardin, Sanliurfa, Tunceli, Van
Grant Amount	: 278.000 TL
Project Partner	:
Period	: 1 June 2009 - 30 September 2010
Status	: Completed
Project Year	: 2009

Background

Women with disabilities or women with disabled children are not aware of their rights and they don’t know how to access support mechanisms.Most of the times they are scared to face societal prejudices and unaware of the fact that their children have right to access special education and rehabilitation services and lock themselves to their house. Under such circumstances both the development of the kid and the mother is blocked and this perpetuates domestic violence and alienates women. (KAMER, 2008)

Project Goals

• 15.000 houses will be visited in Diyarbakır, Hakkari, Tunceli, Urfa and Van.
• The needs of disabled children and their mothers will be determined during those visits in the neighborhood.
• Parallel events for women in the neighborhood and their children will be organized to raise awareness on disability.
• This data will be collected in a report and will be presented to the Turkish Parliament.
• Needs-based services will be established in Women Centers in the neighborhood according to the collected data.
• Awareness about women’s rights and rights of persons with disabilities will be raised and their participation in the society will be encouraged.

Project Results

• Volunteers visited 15.000 houses in 5 cities and collected data regarding a population of 90.000 people.
• Secondary visits to 1430 houses were conducted to get detailed information regarding women with disabilities or women with disabled kids.
• 2000 women were reached through 33 neighborhood meetings and 500 children including 200 children with disabilities were reached through children festivities in 5 cities.
• The advocacy reports are sent to the decision makers.

Testimonials

“Now I understand the situation of persons with disabilities much better when I think of multiple stairs in the entrance of the buildings, high pedestrians, public transportation…And I ask; How many of those people who built those buildings have persons with disabilities in their lives? How many of them ever encountered a person with disability on the street and walk on the same pedestrian?”

Van KAMER, Volunteer

“During the project, we became aware of the level of pressure on women, poverty and lack of confidence of women. At our first visits in the neigborhood, they were trying to hide the violace they were subject to. They were saying “my husband does not get drunk or beat me, I am grateful”. The moment they start to trust us their sayings were changing. We realized how the families with disabled kids were marginlized and alineated from the rest of the society.”

Tunceli KAMER, Volunteer