From building accessible shower and laundry facilities to distributing hygiene kits, the KAMER Women’s Centre Foundation (KAMER Kadın Merkezi Vakfı) has been providing critical aid to women and girls.
With the support of our Regional Recovery Support Program, launched under the Kahramanmaraş Earthquake Emergency Relief Fund, expert-led psychosocial support groups have helped women cope with the traumatic effects of the earthquakes and find healing and hope.
Please read the following interview with the organisation for an insight into their work.
Can you tell us about your organisation’s goals and activities, as this is the first time you have received a grant from us?
At KAMER, based in Diyarbakır, we aim to identify and counter harmful practices rooted in gender-biased cultural and traditional values. Our mission is to develop alternatives and promote their implementation to protect women and children. Our ultimate goal is to increase the number of women who have escaped violence and actively participate in society.
KAMER was established in 1997. Initially, we faced significant opposition and negative propaganda, suggesting that our goal was to erode the cultural structure of Türkiye by changing women, thus harming our culture and society. Through our methods and goals, we managed to overcome this negative propaganda, fostering participation, inclusivity, and social integration.
All our efforts have always been defined in collaboration with women. We fought against violence because women complained about it. Our initial efforts involved educating women about violence, its negative impacts, relevant laws, available services, and emphasising that no one has the right to use violence for any reason.
Issues like dowry, polygamy, blood money marriages, forced and early marriages, and lack of educational rights were identified and addressed together with women. Women themselves identify harmful practices and work with us to develop and implement alternatives, guided by human rights and international agreements signed by Türkiye.
In the past two years, we’ve also focused on topics like the impact of climate change and the importance of local governance, based on women’s questions and demands. At KAMER, we respect everyone’s language, beliefs, and attire, and we work in multiple languages. It is now understood that we aim to fight against harmful practices, not to undermine cultural structures. Women have been instrumental in growing and developing KAMER.
At KAMER, we aim to identify and counter harmful practices rooted in gender-biased cultural and traditional values.
Can you discuss the activities and outcomes of the “Solidarity Keeps Us Alive” project you implemented with our grant?
Having previously worked with survivors of the Bingöl, Van, and Elazığ earthquakes and the Batman floods, we were able to respond quickly after the Kahramanmaraş earthquakes.
In the immediate aftermath of a disaster, the needs are clear: clean water, ready-to-eat food, hygiene supplies, and warm clothing in winter. These can be provided and distributed without a detailed needs assessment. However, a few months later, the needs change, making it difficult to stick to the initially planned activities and budget of grants.
We started the “Solidarity Keeps Us Alive” project in mid-June 2023. As in previous disasters, KAMER teams lived under similar conditions as the survivors, in tents and containers in Adıyaman, Malatya, Gaziantep, Kahramanmaraş, and Hatay, facilitating rapid needs assessments directly from the survivors.
We prioritised reaching women experiencing multidimensional poverty. We visited neighbourhoods and villages not previously reached, identified needs, and used the project resources to support women with limited access to assistance.
We used a form during field visits to record women’s needs. One question was whether they had been visited by any institution, organisation, or civil society organisation before. 62.8% of survivors reported they had not been visited by anyone before.
Support provided includes:
- Building a compound in Hatay to serve as a Support Centre for Women and Children with Disabilities with containers from the “Solidarity Keeps Us Alive” project.
- Providing legal support through individual and group counselling. We offered 160 individual and 263 group sessions, totaling 423 counselling sessions.
- Offering online psychological counselling in multiple languages, limited to five sessions per survivor, with 1,860 sessions conducted with 372 female survivors.
- Engaging 5,580 women in psycho-education groups, each with about 15 women, meeting five times. These groups helped strengthen survivors women through solidarity and empathy.
The project significantly affected the lives of the women we reached, allowing them to meet basic needs, receive legal and psychological support, and gain strength.
Empowering women also leads to changes in children, fostering a desire for a non-violent, and equitable life. Donors should recognise and support this continuous empowerment.
Based on your work with women affected by earthquakes, what key considerations should be made in such efforts?
Poverty, which became more visible during the pandemic, deepened after the February 6 earthquakes. We identified our target group as women experiencing multidimensional poverty and unable to access opportunities and services.
We found that for some women, life seemed to have completely stopped. They had no energy or motivation to seek basic necessities. Others, despite experiencing violence, focused on accessing food and were feeling anger at everyone. These women, already living difficult lives, had lost everything due to the earthquakes. They couldn’t meet their daily needs, experiencing intense helplessness and anger, neglecting their own needs.
We identified these families and delivered food parcels, hygiene kits, and clothing. We continued this support periodically, eventually establishing active communication with these women.
The key consideration is understanding that “Women feel helpless due to their losses and hardships, neglecting their own issues like violence and health problems.” Women’s organisations working in the field must adopt a different approach, combining humanitarian aid and rights-based work. However; it’s crucial to avoid creating competitive or chaotic environments for survivors to receive humanitarian aid, even in urgent situations. At KAMER, we developed methods to prevent this and ensured that survivors didn’t compete for any kind of support.
What are KAMER’s future goals and projects? How has our grant support affected your future goals?
KAMER was already organised in eight of the 11 provinces declared disaster areas, making KAMER a disaster survivor as well. We replaced the destroyed offices with container offices and will continue working in these locations.
With this grant support, we built a compound in Hatay to serve as a Support Centre for Women and Children with Disabilities. We will continue to reach out to women who became disabled due to the disaster and their caregivers, identify their needs, amplify their voices, and meet their needs as much as possible.
Why do you think it is important for donors to support women’s empowerment efforts?
Despite everything, women continue to gain strength. Women’s empowerment, efforts to combat violence, and striving for active participation in society bring hope for both Türkiye and the world. Empowering women also leads to changes in children, fostering a desire for a non-violent, and equitable life. Donors should recognise and support this continuous empowerment.
