INTRODUCTION

ÇİĞDEMİM EDUCATION, ENVIRONMENT, AND SOLIDARITY ASSOCIATION

OUR MISSION

By expanding the culture of being a neighborhood; To increase the quality of life of the neighborhood residents and to be effective in decision-making processes.

OUR VISION

To be a neighborhood where neighborhood culture and solidarity culture are active, having influence in regional and national decision-making processes, and individuals with different living areas (age, gender, disability, etc.) are happy.

OUR VALUES

Transparent: The association shares all kinds of information and documents about decisions and practices.

Volunteer: All activities of the association are based on volunteering.

Solidarist: The association, in its application, displays an approach that it is sensitive to the environment and social events, helpful, sharer, and devoted.

Unprejudiced: The association acts unbiased in all its applications and is open to different ideas, opinions, and suggestions.

Impartial and independent against political parties: The association respects different political views and stands at an equal distance.

Participant: The association takes its decisions with the intellection of participation (all parties, women, children, disabled people, older adults, etc.) and consensus. It participates in social decision-making mechanisms in line with its mission, vision, and values. It handles the comprehensive work on every issue that concerns the neighborhood with citizenship awareness after determining and accepting common understanding, division of labor, authority, and responsibility.

Pioneer: The association plays a pioneering role in society and its surrounding with its sample practices.

An organization with keeping learning: It is open to change and development. For this, it evaluates all opportunities.

Çiğdemim Education, Environment, and Solidarity Association, shortly ÇİĞDEMİM Association, was organized around the headman of that time in 1996 by 14 people who believed that things should be kept from one end of the works instead of waiting for the government and then become an association. In the early days, the association worked with the headman to solve the neighborhood’s problems and increased its activities and works after it got strong enough.

It is an INDEPENDENT- OBJECTIVE AND VOLUNTARY MOVEMENT.

Our association, whose primary purpose is to improve the quality of life of the neighborhood residents and strengthen the neighborhood relations that are gradually forgotten, carries out a wide range of studies in this direction. We take care of meeting and mingling of neighbors in every activity and work, thus we can improve neighborly relations.

We take care to develop a sense of social responsibility in our work with neighborhood residents. We believe that the people who take care of the neighborhood in which they live, in the narrowest scope, take care of the country’s problems and take responsibility when necessary.

The association cod number, bank account number.

SELECTIONS FROM OUR EVENTS

Oğuz Tansel District Library: Our book library, which started with 200 books and a sofa-bed library, has reached nearly 30000 books. Our number of reading books has exceeded 4000 annually.

Seminars/Discourse: To meet residents, mingle, and spend time together, we organize seminars/discourse on various topics to share our knowledge and experience.

Neighborhood Day Fair: We are trying to strengthen neighborly relations with the events we have organized since 2006. At this fair, there are music concerts, folklore performances, competitions, shows, and exhibitions of our association’s guitar and drama groups. Various promotional tables are opening. People are having a lovely day with their neighbors and meeting-mingling. In Ramadan, we organize an iftar with the neighbors at the Brotherhood Table. In Muharram, we are making and distributing Brotherhood ashure.

Tree planting and care: We planted over 2000 trees in our neighborhood with various campaigns. Together with these trees, we maintain the trees planted on the pavements. We also planted a large number of trees and fruit seeds in the METU forest.

Our TSM Choir: Our TSM Choir, which we created in 2003 within our association, works with music lovers of all ages and decorates this work with concerts every year.

Cultural Events: We take the local people with collective tickets we receive and the services we provide for cultural events such as theater, opera, ballet, concert. We collectively go to the event venue, watch the event, and bring them to their homes with services.

Communication: We have an electronic communication group and website that exceed 4000 people. www.cigdemim.org.tr. We provide communication with our neighbors through our Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter accounts (/cigdemimdernegi).

Trips: We organize trips to various regions to promote the historical and natural beauties in the country and abroad and to allow our residents to mingle.

Neighborhood Problems: We are in correspondence and meeting with municipalities and public institutions to solve all kinds of problems in our neighborhood. We have created and succeeded in the fields of streetlights, asphalt-pavement, lifting the high voltage line, changing our municipal bus route, pouring excavation into the METU forest, and combating mistletoe. We struggled with the base stations and sue for this. To draw attention to the problems in the Şirindere region, we carried out a signature campaign and protest action with the theme of “Şirindere is now a problematic stream.”

We held a public vote together with Çankaya Municipality to build the parks and sports areas that everyone will use by removing the astroturf facilities in our neighborhood and in line with the result, the opening of the “Can Yücel Park” was held.

We campaigned for the solution to the school problem in our neighborhood. Our new school is being built.

Solid Waste Collection Project: We collect electronic waste, waste batteries, and waste vegetable oils in our association and give them to the relevant institutions. We collect waste papers such as newspapers and magazines in our association and generate income. We collect other recyclable waste (glass, plastic, etc.) in the municipal piggy bank.

We received the e-waste hero award for our work on electronic waste at the “Electric and Electronic Waste Summit” organized by ITU on 5-6 March 2015.

Skill Based Training: We provide various training to contribute to the personal development of our neighbors. Guitar, painting, English, folk dances, sewing, patchwork, photography, computer literacy, and summer school activity for children are some of them.

English Speaking Community: The English speaking community, which we established in 2009 within the association, meets once a week and continues its activities. The works attended by our neighbors who do not want to forget or improve their English practice continue in joy.

Educational Support Project: According to the amount of contributions collected in the pool we created, we provide education support for university students for nine months. We accept donations to the education support fund at any time and in the desired amount.

Social Responsibility Projects: We have helped many people and organizations within the scope of social assistance activities. We distribute and send books-encyclopedia and supplementary textbooks collected in the association. We collect second-hand clothing and goods in our association and deliver them to those in need.

Photography Community: We provide “Basic Photography Training”, organize seminars, and conduct workshops in the community we created within the association. The community also organizes photographing trips from time to time, and they share their work with the residents of the neighborhood with their exhibitions.

Painting Community: They open hobby courses for adults and children, and at the end of the year, they present their work to the residents with an exhibition. They perform wall-transformer painting with children.

Literary Community: To create an environment where literary lovers interested in all fields of literature such as poetry, story, novel, and essay come together and share ideas about the works, the community organizes conversation and discussion meetings about a determined literary work every month, and events that will bring literature lovers together with the writers are held.

Cinema Community: The community that we created to generate an environment where moviegoers come together and watch movies together and discuss that movie, is watching a movie together every month. In the summer, an open-air cinema event is held.

Çiğdemim Neighborhood Garden: As Çiğdemim Association, we set out to produce our natural products in our neighborhood with the support of the Permankara group. For this purpose, we started working in the area next to our association building in 2012. Our aim in this project is to show that organic-natural crop cultivation in the countryside can also be done in the city center, to raise awareness in the society in this regard, to share basic information about natural product cultivation, to gain skills, to introduce our children and young people to the habits of growing crops and to introduce the plant species.

University Collaboration and Projects: Together with METU Department of Industrial Design, we carried out projects on “My Dream Çiğdem Neighbourhood “, “Çiğdem Neighbourhood Identity”, “Çiğdem Neighbourhood Reuse Scenarios” and “Participation of People with Disabilities and Their Relatives in Social Life in Çiğdem Neighbourhood”. Thesis studies including the works of our association were made and theses including our association were prepared. We realized the project “Çiğdemim Children’s Art Workshop” with the Hacettepe University Department of Interior Architecture and Environmental Design.

Ecological Society And Life Days: The first of the Ankara Ecological Society and Life Days was held in Çiğdemim Neighborhood Garden in June 2013 with the theme “Let’s Shape Our Neighborhood Ecologically”, and the second in June 2014, “Local Production, Real Food”. The third of the event was held in June 2015 with the theme of “Real Food and Food Rights”. The fourth event took place in 2017 with the theme “Child and Ecology”

Philosophy Community: A Thinking Game workshop was organized to bring children together with philosophy. Students in the 12-13-14 age group participated in the study, which was handled in the Çıtır Çıtır Philosophy series stories, to organize conversations on most meaningful concepts, to discuss, think, express their thinking, ask questions, and to develop their ability to take a stand in the face of problems. Students of the METU Department of Philosophy-Sociology participated in the studies as a tutorial.

Second-Hand Clearing, Sharing, And Sales Market: In this event, which we held for the first time in April 2014 and continue to do so because of the intense interest with the slogan “We are opening the door to sharing against the consumer”, many residents shared, exchanged, and sold clothes and goods that they no longer need for themselves. With this event, which was initiated in order to prevent consumption madness and not to be a consumer society, we are instrumental in the re-remembering of the sharing of goods, exchange, and neighborhood.

All Together We Visit The Ankara Museum: We aim to visit the lesser-known museums of Ankara together with the neighbors and make museums loved by the neighbors in the “Together We Visit Ankara Museums” event, which we started to implement within the scope of social and cultural responsibility of our association. We visit and promote two museums to our members free of charge every month.

Çiğdemim KAY Project: We started a project in cooperation with our headman, animal lovers, and Çankaya Municipality for the solution of the street dogs problem in our neighborhood. The project lasted for 2 years successfully, but we had to terminate it because we could not get enough support from the stakeholders of the subject.

Life is Unimpeded in Çiğdem Neighborhood: To contribute to the participation of people with disabilities in social life in Çiğdem District based on equal citizenship principles and the development of a rights-based view in this regard, to increase the participation of residents with disabilities in our association activities, we have organized various activities to contribute to social sensitivity and change in this regard by determining the barriers to the participation of disabled people in social and cultural services with the participation of the target audience.

Photography Workshop Without Hindrance: These activities, which started with the Life Barrier-Free Project in Çiğdem District, continue after the project.

Şirindere Rhythm Group: The rhythm studies we started with the children of paper collectors in the Şirindere Region continue. Our group organizes demonstrations for neighborhood residents on various occasions.

Çiğdem Cabaret: We do theater work and put it on stage. In 2018, we staged the play “Again Çiğdem Cabaret ” at the Ankara Ethos International Theater Festival.

Activities With Kids: We are trying to involve our children who will become our future with activities such as Dance with Children, Tales with Children, English with Songs for Children, Painting Workshop with Children, Literature with Children, and Philosophy with Children.