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NGO UPDATE
MUCH BEYOND AN IMAGE OF FLYING WITCH ON HER BROOM
In this issue, I would like to tell you the story of the feminist women's NGO
Flying Broom. The Flying Broom was officially established in November 1996 in
Ankara. It aims to support gender equality and empowerment of women mainly by
initiating organizations and activities in order to bring together women's associations
and women who are sensitive to the women's movement. They foster interaction,
exchange of experience, effective communication, co-operation and solidarity
among women and hope to establish and strengthen communication networks among
national and international women's NGOs. The Flying Broom is surrounded by a
large circle of friends and supporters both in Turkey and abroad, including
the activists of women's movement, academicians interested in women's issues,
professional women from different lines of work and university students. However,
what brought the media attention to them in/outside of Turkey is actually the
annual film festival.
Flying Broom is organizing the one and only women's film festival in Turkey for 5 years. 6th festival will be held in 15-18th May 2003 in Ankara. The first phase of the festival is the "short film stories competition". As a principal Flying Broom wants to encourage women to let them express their ideas, desires, fears through writing. Another reason to organize such a competition is to encourage and support short film makers. An advisory board that consists of three people evaluates the stories to see if they have a certain women's point of view. During the festival the writers whose stories pass this phase participate in a workshop in Ankara that is organized by a professional screenplay writer.
In the rest of this paper, however, I 'd like to mention another very important project that Flying Broom has initiated recently and unfortunately it was completely ignored by the leading mass media. Here is my perfect chance to introduce you the project and maybe inspire similar ones in your own countries in case they don't still exist in some forms. Its title is: "Local Women Reporters Net Project".
Why/How is Local Women Reporters Net Project born?
Turkey as a young democracy has experienced many rises and falls, which have
given rise to prevention of a strong civil society. It is clear that the network
systems have been the most prominent profit of recent technologies all over
the world. Being aware of the outcomes of getting and sharing information between
the people of a "global world" today regardless of sex and age is
important. Women played an essential role in such a new awareness of globalization,
so they should not be excluded from information, on the contrary, should be
participating actively in all the discussions related to both public and private
spheres.
The Flying Broom is already utilizing different communication tools such as web site, radio and television programs and printed materials to provide women and women's NGOs the opportunity to participate in the shaping of the information-based society in Turkey. And there is an important difference between the other audio-visual, printed and electronic media addressed to women, and the Flying Broom's media project. The mainstream media, which is jam-packed with references from the typical women's magazines, direct women's interests merely to fashion, beauty, maternity, decoration, and cooking. Flying Broom, on the other hand believes that women in Turkey have to question women's status in both their country and the world and they should have access to promoting women's rights and empowerment.
The Flying Broom's official web site gives an opportunity to women in Turkey to reach the national and international information and links from the Internet. It also provides an opportunity to the women's NGOs so that they can communicate with each other about their problems and share ideas.
However, information resources are limited to big cities in Turkey and a continuous lack of local news about the women's NGOs and grassroots women is a problem. Absence of local women information and communication networks creates dependence to the mainstream media as information source. This dependence also paralyses the efforts for creating an alternative women's media.
What is the Aim of the Project?
The aim of the project is to initiate a women's network to carry the local issues
and grassroots women's testimonies, demands and priorities to the national agenda,
to break the dependency to the mainstream media as the only source of local
news about women, and to create a strong and solid ground for the alternative
women's media. It also aims to provide local women's NGOs and women in general
the opportunity to assert and express themselves in an "information society"
and to make use of the different information technologies for a more just, democratic
and egalitarian society.
For the implementation of the project, an establishment of a local women reporters network was proposed as the main methodological device. 12 cities have been chosen for the first year implementation of the project, so the local reporters' network would consist of one woman from each target city. The target cities are: Istanbul, Çanakkale, Afyon, Eskisehir, Adiyaman, Gaziantep, Diyarbakir,Van, Izmir, Antalya, Mersin Samsun.
The local news on grassroots women and women's NGOs that would be gathered by the local reporters would be disseminated by the existing media devices of the Flying Broom, all of which have its own advantages and disadvantages, but will complement each other when used simultaneously and create the most effective dissemination of women news. Radio broadcasts and electronic media would have the advantage of a high speed. Especially, The Flying Broom's web site would provide an effective and quick tool for the dissemination of the women's news both nationally and internationally. On the other hand, the bulletin and printed materials will give the Flying Broom the chance to reach to the NGOs and people who have not access to Internet.
Establishment of local women reporters' network would mean to take a new and important step in gender equality in Turkey. It will serve to the objective of establishing networks as well as to strengthen the communication and cooperation among women's organizations, women's studies centers at various universities, and documentation centers.
The two projects presented here would give you an idea about the wide range of the projects that Flying Broom is dealing with. A group of dedicated feminist women in Ankara are not alone and they are gathering their energy and support from a variety of different institutions. Just to name a few: British Embassy, the Turkish Ministry of Culture, UNDP, Turkish Radio-Television(TRT), Global Fund for Women, Mamacash, (Netherlands), International Women's Health Coalition.
Compiled by Ozlem Ezer