INTRODUCTION

ÇİĞDEMİM: Association for education, environment, and solidarity.

Our mission: by extending the culture of being a neighbour, being effective on decision-making process and enhancing the neighbour’s quality of life.

Our vision: being a neighbourhood where individuals who has different characteristics are happy and effective on the processes of decision-making in both local and national levels and where the culture of being a neighbourhood and supporting one another is placed.

Our values:

Transparency: The association shares all the information and documentation about the applications and the decisions made.

Voluntariness: All the actions taken in the association are based on voluntariness.

Solidarity: The association takes an approach of being helpful, sharer, devoted, and sensitive to environment and public events in all actions taken.

Disinterestedness: The association is unbiased in all the actions taken and is open to different ideas, opinions, and suggestions.

Neutrality: The association is neutral to political parties and independent.

Participant: The association makes its decisions with all relevant parties, women, children, the disabled, the elderly, etc. in compromission. It participates in social decision-making mechanisms in line with its mission, vision, and values.  It deals with the comprehensive work on every issue that concerns the neighbourhood with a civic consciousness after determining the common understanding, division of labour, authority and responsibilities and accepting them.

Pioneer: The association plays a leading role inside and around the society with its exemplary practices.

Learning Organization: The association is open to change and development and makes use of all opportunities for this.

Çiğdem association for education, environment, and solidarity (ÇİĞDEMİM) is established by 14 people who believes that one should do something rather than expecting things being handled by state in 1996. At first, it worked collaboratively with the reeve to solve the problems of the neighbourhood. After gaining enough power, the number of activities and work increased.

ÇİĞDEMİM is an independent, impartial, and voluntary action.

With the main intention of improving the quality of life of the residents of the neighbourhood and to strengthen the neighbourly relations that are almost being forgotten, ÇİĞDEMİM carries out wide range of work in this direction. In each event, the association elaborates neighbours getting to know one another. Thus, the improvement of neighbourly relations is ensured.

We care about developing awareness of social responsibility in our work with the residents of our neighbourhood and we believe that those who take care of the neighbourhood they live in and deal with the problems of it will stake out a claim of the problems of our country and will take action when necessary.

Code number of the association: 06-51-095

Bank account number: Türkiye İş Bankası, Ankara Çukurambar Branch, 4379 – 0001560,

IBAN: TR73 0006 4000 0014 3790 0015 60

Address: Çiğdem Mahallesi, 1551. Cadde No: 14-A, 06530 Ankara/Çankaya

Phone number: +90 312 285 20 47 / +90-530 660 95 83

Mail address: dernek@cigdemim.org.tr

Some of Our Activities

Oğuz Tansel Neighbourhood Library

Our neighborhood library, which has only 200 books in a bookcase made from a sofa bed at the beginning, now has roughly 30000 books.  More than 4000 books per year are read.

Çiğdemim Neighbourhood Mahalle BostanıGarden

With the contribution and support of the Permankara group, we produce natural products in our neighborhood to demonstrate that organic product cultivation in rural areas can also be done in the center of the city. Moreover, our aim is  to raise awareness of the society about organic products, by providing basic knowledge and skills, and to enable our children and youth to gain experience in organic product cultivation by introducing plant species.

Seminars and Communes

With the purpose of meeting the residents of the neighbourhood, spending quality time together, and while doing this, sharing our knowledge and experience, we organise seminars and communes on various subjects.

Neighbours Day Fair

We are trying to strengthen neighbourly relations with the event we have been organizing since 2006. Music concerts, folklore performances, competitions, and shows of our association’s ensembles are exhibited at this fair. Neighbours meet one another and spend quality time together. In Ramadan, we organize iftar with our neighbours at the Kardeşler Sofrası. In Muharram, we make and distribute Kardeşlik ashura.

Ecological Society and Life Days

We organize the Ankara Ecological Society and Life Days event in order to increase environmental awareness. So far, we have organized activities with the themes of Let’s Shape Our Neighbourhood Ecologically in 2013, Local Production, Real Food in 2014, Real Food and the Right to Food in 2015, and Children and Ecology in 2017.

Tree Planting and Maintenance

We planted lots of trees and fruit seeds in M.E.T.U. forest and more than 2000 trees in our neighbourhood by organizing various campaigns. In addition to the maintenance of these trees, we also take care of the trees already planted on the pavements.

Turkish Classical Music Choir

Turkish Classical Music Choir, which we formed within our association in 2003, works with music lovers of all ages and organizes concerts every year.

Cultural Events

We bring together the residents of our neighbourhood with the tickets we buy and the transportation services we provide for cultural events such as theatre, opera, ballet and concerts.

Communication

We communicate with our neighbours through our Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts and we have a website used by more than 4000 people.

Trips

We organize domestic and abroad trips, which our neighbourhood residents socialize, to umpteen regions to get to know the historical and natural beauties

Solving Problems of Our Neighbourhood

We are in correspondence with municipalities and public institutions to solve the problems of the neighbourhood. We created public opinion on the repair of streetlamps, asphalt, and pavements, removing the high-voltage line, reorganizing the municipal bus route, combating mistletoe, and pouring gafriya into the M.E.T.U. forest, and we succeeded in solving these problems. We scrambled by filing lawsuits regarding base stations. In order to draw attention to the problems in Şirindere region, we organized a petition with the theme “Şirindere is now a problematic creek.” and we protested the situation.

We held a public vote together with Çankaya Municipality to remove the astroturf pitch facilities in our neighbourhood and build parks and sports areas that everyone can use. Thus, Can Yücel park opened to public use.

We contributed to the opening of the new school by running a campaign to solve the school problem in our neighbourhood.

Second hand exchange and,  sharinge and  marketing

Our event, which we held for the first time in 2014 under the slogan “We Are Opening the Door of Sharing Against Consumption” to prevent the frenzied consumption, drew a lot of attention, and we have continued to hold it each season. We organize activities that enable the sharing, marketing, and exchange of second-hand clothes and goods.

Trainings

We provide numerous courses in order to contribute to the personal development of our neighbours and summer school for children. Some of them are guitar, art classes, English, folk dances, sewing, patchwork, photography, and computer literacy.

Social responsibility projects

We assist many people and organizations within the scope of social welfare studies by distributing books, encyclopaedias and supplementary textbooks collected in the association. Also, we collect second-hand clothes and goods in our association and deliver them to the people in need.

Education support project

According to the amount of contribution collected in the money pool, We provide educational support to university students for 9 months. We accept donations to the education support fund at any time and in the desired amount.

Collaboration with Universities

With the department of Industrial Design at Middle East Technical University, we carried out projects: “Çiğdem District in My Dream”,  “Çiğdem District Identity”, “Re-use Scenarios for Çiğdem District” and “Participation of Persons with Disabilities and Their Relatives in Social Life in Çiğdem District”. Also, thesis studies including the works of our association are prepared and we made contribution to them. In addition, we have implemented the “Çiğdemim Children’s Art Workshop” project with Hacettepe University, Department of Interior Architecture and Environmental Design.

Waste Recycling Project

We collect electronic waste, dead batteries and used vegetable oils in our association and deliver them to relevant recycling organizations. We collect waste papers such as newspapers and magazines in our association to generate income from them and other recyclable wastes such as glass and plastic in municipal recycling bins.

We received the e-waste hero award for our contribution to the recycling of electronic waste at the Electrical and Electronic Waste Summit organized by Istanbul Technical University on March 5-6, 2015.

CIGDEMIM KAYCVL Project

We worked with the Çiğdem District Headman, Çankaya Municipality, and animal lovers to implement the Castration – Vaccinate – Live (KAY)CVL) project in order to address the issues with stray dogs in our neighbourhood, but we had to end the project after two years due to a lack of support from the stakeholders.

Barrier-FreeAbled Life In Çiğdem Neighbourhood

With the financial support of the Ankara Development Agency, we organize a number of events to promote the development of a rights-based perspective, to encourage our neighbourhood’s disabled residents to participate on the basis of equal citizenship principles, and to remove barriers to their access to social and cultural services.

We organize Abled Photography workshops with the motto Life Doesn‘’t Have Barriers with the residents of Çiğdem district.

English Speaking Club

English Speaking Club gathers neighbours and volunteers once a week in order to help our neighbours who do not want to forget their knowledge or want to improve their English practice.

Photography community

We provide basic photography trainings, organize seminars, and conduct workshops accordingly. From time to time, the community also organizes photo-shooting trips and shares their works with the residents of the neighbourhood through exhibitions.

Art community

We offer hobby courses for children and adults. Their works are displayed to the residents of the neighbourhood at the end of the year with an exhibition. They also paint wall-transformer with the children.

Philosophy community

With the participation of Middle East Technical University, Philosophy and Sociology department students, the Thinking Game workshop was held, in which the “Çıtır Çıtır Çıtır Çıtır Philosophy” series, aiming to bring philosophy together with 12-, 13- and 14-year-old children, was addressed and discussions were held on meaningful concepts and interrogation skills were developed.

Literature community

In addition to arranging poetry recitals and interviews with authors, we select a literary work every month and offer an environment where comments are made on the work with literature lovers.

Cinema community

In addition to organizing an open-air cinema event in the summer months, we select a movie and create an environment where comments about the movie are made every month.

Cigdem Cabaret

It performs theatertheatre works and stages plays. It performed Çiğdem Cabaret again at the Ankara Ethos International TheaterTheatre Festival held in 2018.

Turkish Classical Music Choir

It works with music lovers of all ages and organizes concerts every year.

Şirindere Rhythm Group

The group that created with the children of the people who make a living by collecting paper in Şirindere district is organizing demonstrations/shows for the residents of the neighbourhood.