URFA GAZIANTEP AUGUST 2017 Meeting Notes
AS JANA, we are trying to be as transparent as possible in all our activities, sharing our success and our failures on this blog. If we met you and that you think the report does not reflect correctly what you are doing, just let us know..it will be a good opportunity to catch up and clarify
14.08.2017 Monday - Harran Urfa
09.00 -14.00: Amazon Kraliçeleri ○ Participants: Sezer Arslan (GM of Belarto, buyer), Sandrine and Dhouha, Temel Ayca (sub governor of Harran), Huseyin Aksu (leader of the wood workshop) and Yahya Dogan (Project Manager) ○ Description of activities: see previous call report (February) ○ After joint breakfast and introduction of Sezer Arslan, we went to visit again the community centres. In the wood workshop we were amazed to see the new products that have been developed. They looked so nice. Belarto looks enthusiast too. We went then to visit again the community centre where the other activities are located: textile, ceramics, food, etc. It was nice to see again some of the women we saw back in February.
While Belarto and the sub governor went to discuss further business, we gave the introduction to our JANA Save program to a group of around 30 women, 75% Syrian and the other 25% Turkish. We had some trouble at the beginning since the Turkish women could not understand the arabic of our trainer but all in all we managed to do the presentation. They looked quite enthusiast. It looks utopic to think we can make common groups Syrian and Turkish but maybe we could organise 2 separate groups. We will follow that up in September.
URFA GAZIANTEP AUGUST 2017 Meeting Notes
We then came back to the office of the sub-governor to discuss some of their future projects and some grants that we think could be appropriate for them.
16:00- 17:00 ORANGE - DRC ● Participants: Sandrine, Dhouha and Bashir Hello ● Activities: Orange is an NGO based in Gaziantep with activities in Antakya, Urfa and Kilis. They are running a livelihood program supported by Danish Refugee Council. They are mainly providing a 5 days training to support syrian entrepreneurs (small businesses) to set up their business; thereafter the entrepreneurs have the opportunity to apply for a grant of 500 USD per project. They are doing the follow up on a regular basis. ● Discussion: Dhouha presented the activities of JANA in Arabic. We mentioned about the JANA save program and how it could be complementary to the training they are already giving to their entrepreneurs. We will follow up with Gaziantep.
URFA GAZIANTEP AUGUST 2017 Meeting Notes
15.08.2017 TUESDAY Gaziantep
08.00-10.00: Road trip to Gaziantep
10:00- 11.30: Basmat Amal ● Participants: Dhouha and Sandrine, Fr Nidal Ajam, Vadah Kayali and Haitham Alhashemi ● Activities: Non registred yet initiative led by three medical doctor from Syria who wanted to support syrian women begging on the street in Gaziantep. They have surveyed the textile sector (their families were in textile), built a business plan and raised money around friends. They have rented a place in the textile neighbourhood in Gaziantep and are training women during a 6 month rotating program. They are providing them reimbursement for transport costs as well as breakfast and lunch. Their aim is to be able to answer to tender offer. They are developing their network in that field. ● Discussion: after understanding what they were doing and visiting the workshop, Dhouha introduced the program to the women answering their questions.
12.00-13.00: Syrian Economic Forum ● Participants: Rami H. Sharrack & Muhammed Damour ● Activities: see previous report ● Discussion: update on their project: the need assessment has been concluded, they are now working on a culinary incubator in partnership with Cipe and Idema and funding from PRM. They will be in charge of implementation in Gaziantep while Idema will cover Istanbul. They are also looking to develop their membership offer which could include Business clubs to support Syrian entrepreneurship with various services.
13:00-15.30 : Selam NGO ● Participants: Dhouha, Sandrine and Muhammed Damour ● Activities: Private initiative in Gaziantep which started to support children without parents in Syria. With the agreement of the Turkish state, they brought them back in Gaziantep to give them shelter and food. They started to grow and are also now welcoming single mother or women. Through private funds, they are renting a block of apartment and
URFA GAZIANTEP AUGUST 2017 Meeting Notes
providing shelter and food for everyone. Children are going to the turkish schools. They would like to start livelihood activities for the women. ● Discussion: We had lunch with the founders during which he explained the history of the project and the hurdles. We then went to visit the location, visiting the apartment and speaking with the women. We were more thinking it will be a kind of orphanage but this is more a block of apartments very nicely furnished with a lot of light and children running everywhere. Beautiful initiative. Not sure yet how we can support them but we will definitively follow them.
16.00-17.30: Syrian Women Network ● Participants: Dhouha, Sandrine and around 10 women from whom Khawla Dunia in charge of the network ● Activities: Network existing in 14 locations across the world. They are sharing together what they are doing. The “Turkish one” is Syrian based organization with authorization to have activities in Turkey. They are a group of around 30 women meeting on a regular basis to promote the intellectual development of women (2014 -2015) and its political education (2015-2016). They are also supporting a group of rural women in Syria who are producing leather goods like wallet, keyrings, earrings, etc. Their funding is mainly coming from the Swedish organization OLOF Palme. They are also providing some trainings like project management (PMD) to prepare some women to work in international organizations. ● Discussion: We listened to their story and activities. They showed us as well the products made by the women in Syria. We then presented them with our JANA save program that they liked. They will participate to the training in September. We will also think about how we can help them with the leather goods.
URFA GAZIANTEP AUGUST 2017 Meeting Notes
16.08.2017 WEDNESDAY Gaziantep
08.30: Care.org ● Participants: Sandrine, Dhouha and Nawras Alhusein, syria resilience consortium, Program manager ● Activities: there are two groups CARE based in Gaziantep, one is covering Syria and the other one is covering Turkey. Concerning the VSLA, you started the project in February in Syria. The Turkish side did not start anything on this side. They have identified one city and 30 groups of 15-20 persons have been constituted organically (11 women only, 9 mixed, 10 men only). The groups are meeting twice a month (although you were wondering whether this might be too much). Their project is covering 9 months. For each of the group, they have 700 EUR available but they have not decided yet how best to allocate it or under which conditions. ● Discussion: We compared our program and share our difficulties and how we went through them. Nawras was quite interested by our approach but he will be leaving Care by September. He introduced us to his colleague running the Turkish side, which might be interested to start saving groups together.
11.00-12.00 : Bousla - Syrian Forum ● Participants: Sandrine, Dhouha, Majdi Abdullkader and Ramez Abdullah ● Activities: see previous report ● Discussion: we re-explained in details our program and our different activities and the intended impact. Bousla confirmed they were interested to support us with the logistic of the training in Gaziantep. They are also open to develop other projects together if we can order our thoughts more along the lines of output, outcomes, linked activities etc.
14:30 ASAM Committee Meeting ● Participants: Dhouha, Sandrine, Hasan Can Pala (shortly), Ozge Celebi and the group of women ● Activities: created in Ankara in 1995, providing social and legal support for the refugees and asylum-seekers in reaching their rights and services; psychosocial support and organizing numerous courses and activities for the purposes of integrating them into social life through 60 offices across more than 40 provinces in Turkey. Asam is one of the main partner of UNHCR and UN Women. They were also the implementing partner of IMC. In Gaziantep, they have a livelihood activities where around 25 women have formed a very strong group, self led and started production of some jewels. ● Discussion: Dhouha presented in arabic the program of JANA Save and who we were, the women asked questions and looked interested. They also showed us the jewels they were making.
URFA GAZIANTEP AUGUST 2017 Meeting Notes
17.00-18.00: IOM International Organization for Migration ● Participants: Dhouha, Sandrine, Jamil Ahmet Awan and Pirce Altinok ● Activities: IOM Turkey is responding to the livelihood needs of Syrian refugees in Gaziantep, Hatay and Sanliurfa through: 1) provision of in-kind grants, 2) job placement and 3) entrepreneurship training. Some 300 Syrians are starting up small businesses in Turkey with the help of a unique IOM in-kind grants project. Launched in February, the In-Kind Grants (IKG) programme distributed 28 tailored professional toolkits to Syrian refugees. IOM is teaming up with Innomate to identify entrepreneurs and supporting them with grants (2 so far) ● Discussion: After discussing their program and ours, we suggested that maybe they could create business groups across their small grantees, like a group of plumber, a group of hairdresser, that could meet on a monthly basis to share experience but also to learn more about savings and start a group. Let’s see...