How municipalities in Turkey support vocational training for people with disabilities

In the frame of the Erasmus+ Partnership V.IN.E - Vocational INCLUSIVE Education we travelled together as a multidisciplinary delegation of stakeholders in inclusive vocational education and training from Berlin to Turkey. The municipalities in İstanbul Şişli and Eskişehir Tepebaşı  invited us from March 4-7, 2024 to get to know their projects for the professional integration of people with disabilities.
 

Our delegation joined Sevgi Bozdağ, a founder of InterAktiv e.V.;  Susanne Marx-Mücke from the Department for Inclusive Vocational Training at the Senate Department for Education; the Commissioner for People with Disabilities at the Treptow-Köpenick District Office, Stefan Schaul; the Commissioner for Integration at the Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf District Office, Cem Gömüşay; the President of the German-Turkish Town Twinning Association Özcan Mutlu; Simon Mücke, student of special education at Humboldt University Berlin, and the founders of the stattWERKstatt initiative at inclution gUG, Stana Schenck and Stefan Schenck.

Reception at the Tepebaşi district office on 5 March 2024

After arriving in Istanbul on the evening of 4 March, our Berlin delegation was joined by four employees of the Şişli district administration: Ayşe Yavuz from the Department of Foreign Affairs, psychologist Serdar Altun; Güler Dağıdır, member of the Şişli District Assembly and social worker Çiğdem Balaban Aydın. Together we travelled to Eskişehir, where we arrived late in the evening and were warmly welcomed by the employees of the Tepebaşı district, Esra Karan and İnci Çalışkan.

Eskişehir has around 870,000 inhabitants and is located around 3 hours' drive from Istanbul in the Anatolia region. With its three universities, it is known as the "city of students". The old city centre, Odunpazarı, has a history of around 1000 years. The river Porsuk flows through the city. Tepebaşı is one of the 13 districts of the city of Eskişehir.

A rich programme awaited us in Tepebaşı. Our day started on 5 March with a reception at the Tepebaşı district office by the deputy district mayor, Suat Yalnızoğlu, and his team Esra Karan and İnci Çalışkan. Tepebaşı is the city partner of the Berlin district of Treptow-Köpenick. Stefan Schaul, the Berlin district's representative for people with disabilities, was also able to further strengthen this cooperation.

The district administration is located in a light-flooded building, decorated with many art objects in the rooms and corridors. The district office also has a paper workshop, which is visited daily by neighbouring child-day-care centres.

Visit to Melih Savaş Life Village

As the central government does not structurally provide any vocational training programmes for people with disabilities, local authorities in Turkey often step in and develop solutions on their own initiative. In Tepebaşı, for example, the Melih Savaş Life Village, the only one of its kind in Turkey, was created with the help of EU funding. It is a village-like complex with many small units that serve different social purposes. The small workshop for people with disabilities is located next to a facility for dementia patients and a dormitory for female students. The relative proximity to each other offers the opportunity to meet up in leisure time.

The workshop has space for around 15 people, who use a transport service to attend daily. Here they carry out simple assembly work, sort individual parts or manufacture soap products. The facility was built according to the German model of workshops for people with disabilities in 2014. However, the aim is to be able to offer the employees a permanent job on the general labour market after just one year. This happens much more frequently in Tepebaşı than in the sheltered workshops (WfbM) in Germany, where only less than 1% of workshop employees nationwide make it onto the general labour market (source DIMR).

In Tepebaşı, the aim is for all employees to transition to the general labour market, although there is no structural financial support for those affected. On the contrary, families lose care insurance benefits when their family member with a disability enters the general labour market. Nevertheless, around 80 people out of 500 participants in the vocational training programmes at Life Village since 2014 have made the transition into companies (16%). The companies, as well as the participants, are supported by the district administration's specialised staff. 

In addition to the Life Village, we visited another similar facility, "Engelli̇ler Montaj Atölyesi̇", where 20 participants with disabilities were working on assembly orders from companies in the general labour market. Here, too, the sheltered framework of the workshop is only intended to be a short transitional period.

Meeting with parents' initiatives at the Incubator Centre in Tepebaşi

In the evening, we were able to meet with representatives of parents' initiatives from civil society at the Incubator Centre. The centre was set up as a joint project between the districts of Tepebaşı and Treptow-Köpenick with the help of EU funding. It is a meeting and co-working space, advice centre and café all in one. There, we discussed with committed Turkish families what goals we should pursue in the area of work through inclusion. The chairman of the Down syndrome association Eskişehir summed it up as follows:

“We have to find a job for a person,

not a person for a job!”

From the discussions between the representatives of civil society, it became clear that there are also different views on the realisation of "inclusion" in Turkey. While some are satisfied if young people with disabilities are given the opportunity to work in a workshop-like facility, others demand the unrestricted participation of people with disabilities at all levels of social life and consider workshops, for example, to be an outdated model.

We presented the Turkish version of the MYS toolbox at the Incubator Centre and used it for an exercise. The result was a virtual map of the birthplaces of all those present. This gave us an additional sense of connection across borders. The exercise "Where do we come from?" resulted in a treasure map of different places, combined with knowledge, cultural backgrounds, languages and personal experiences.

Visit to Engelliler Sosyal Yaşam Merkezi 

On 6 March, the second day of the study trip, we visited the Tepebaşı community social education centre for people with disabilities. Here, educational programmes are run in small groups for young adults with disabilities, in cooperation with the Life Village. We got to know a group of learners. They introduced themselves and their career goals, told us what they like about the centre and what artistic activities they enjoy, such as weaving, drawing or upcycling objects. The manager spoke about the violence prevention measures, such as the "shouting workshops" that they regularly organise as empowerment training. Many also only stay at the social education centre for a few months. However, the duration is individual and varies from person to person.

Rainbow Café

Our last stop in Tepebaşı was the Rainbow Café. People with disabilities are trained in catering activities there. The café offers the public a hot lunch every day. Many of the employees gain their first experience of participation in work at the café. In addition to technical skills in service and in the kitchen, they expand their social skills in customer contact and teamwork. We were warmly welcomed and enjoyed a delicious meal. For many participants, the Rainbow Café serves as a springboard into other catering businesses in the general labour market and is an important component of inclusive vocational training for vulnerable learners with disabilities. The café's location in the city centre means that encounters between people with and without disabilities are a matter of course in everyday life. 

Visiting Şişli in Istanbul

To kick off our visit to Şişli, the district mayor Muammer Keskin welcomed us to his office at 9 a.m. on 7 March 2024. Our delegation was the last international visit during his term of office, which ends with the local elections at the end of March. Keskin, a member of the Turkish opposition party CHP, is no longer running. Overall, our visit to Turkey was characterised by the election campaign. In both cities İstanbul and Tepebaşı, large-format posters with the candidates' images were everywhere and the election campaign mode was palpable in the district administrations. 

Şişli is located on the European side of the metropolis of İstanbul and has just under 300,000 inhabitants. During the day, up to 2 million people travel through the district for work. We were able to take a look at four social projects launched by the district administration and the Down Inclusion Café. The district of Şişli has developed several social services to help people on low incomes to support themselves.

The clothing bank and the food bank

In special shops, families in need can shop for points.  

The items do not have price tags. Each eligible person can "shop" for up to three items of clothing within three months. The items are new, very high quality, donated by manufacturers who receive tax relief in return.

The food bank can provide up to 5,000 people in the district with basic food and drugstore items. Many items have small packaging errors or have to be repackaged from bulk packaging into standard household quantities. Fresh fruit and vegetables are donated by wholesalers.

Families in need receive a social card. It looks like any credit card. They receive points depending on their level of need, but can also collect points for certain tasks (e.g. sorting rubbish). They can shop for points in special shops. For immobile people, the goods are delivered to their homes. The grocery shop employs people who are able to return to work through this activity.

The neighbourhood kitchen

Another innovative project in the Şişli district is the Gülbahar Neighbourhood Kitchen. It was recently opened on 7 February 2024 and is run by a women's association. The aim is to give people from the neighbourhood access to cooking courses or simply a delicious lunch. There are plans to collaborate with the bachelor's degree programmes in gastronomy and offer cooking courses for families with children with Down's syndrome.

We were told that the academisation of the catering professions is due to the disparity in appreciation between craft and higher education in the population. The structural localisation of vocational training in gastronomy sector at universities is an attempt to get more people interested in these handcrafts.

The neighbourhood centre

The neighbourhood centre has also just opened and gave us a warm welcome. Different rooms can be used on three floors - for childcare while parents run important errands, for family celebrations, for language courses or even for psychosocial support for people with refugee experience. All of these services are provided directly by the district office's specialised staff. This initially creates a barrier for vulnerable groups, as they do not automatically trust state institutions. It therefore takes more time to provide the necessary safe space, especially when accompanying refugees. There is a kitchen on the ground floor that people from the neighbourhood can use. Inclusive cookery courses and meetings are also planned. The building is partially accessible with a wheelchair.

Down Café

A wonderful wrap up to our educational trip was the Down Café in İstanbul's down-town. The café is run by a parents' association and employs 18 people with disabilities. Most of them have Down's syndrome. They work together with colleagues without disabilities. There are always 4-5 people with disabilities on duty, who cook, bake and serve together with people without disabilities. The mothers of some of them are also involved. The café is open seven days a week and in addition to hot meals, desserts and Çay, there are dance classes every Thursday. The family atmosphere immediately appealed to us. A great project that makes people with disabilities and their talents visible and creates encounters at eye level.
 

Teşekkürler!

We are travelling back to Berlin full of valuable impressions and experiences. We got to know many grass-roots projects and met many committed people. Both countries, Germany and Turkey, have signed the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which means that the requirements of this important human rights convention are applicable law in both countries. There are major barriers to implementation in both countries. Germany cannot be a shining example in the areas of vocational training and the transition from school to work, which we are the core topics within the V.IN.E project. The segregating structures in Germany are still prevalent.

We were very pleased to be able to talk to people in Turkey who are convinced that there must be equal opportunities of participation for people with disabilities. And that projects can succeed when administration, parents/ families and civil society network. With Rainbow Café and Café Down, we are taking away best practicies for more visibility of people with disabilities in public spaces. In both countries, there is still a long way to go to achieve a fully inclusive society. It is good to network, learn from each other and strengthen each other in our endeavours.

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