Çigdemim neighbourhood association in Turkey promoting sustainable development

The neighbourhood Çigdem (about 15,800 inhabitants) in the south of Ankara is a highly successful neighbourhood association with an ever growing membership and a strong record of social inclusion activities. It has not only become a model for younger neighbourhood association start-ups in Turkey but also provides many lessons for government and civic activists in other countries.

So let us invite you into the library of the association where the board members hosted a warm reception for Elke Loeffler and the UNDP team when they visited the office of the association.

What is striking about Çigdemim Neighbourhood Association is not only the enthusiasm and commitment of their core members but also its drive to improve its performance. For example, the association has a well defined vision and mission statement and also clear objectives with ambitious targets for its activities.

The current strategic objectives of the neighbourhood association are:

• To improve the quality of life in the neighbourhood with a particular focus on community safety
• To make citizens proud of their neighbourhood
• To increase volunteering
• To reduce social exclusion

The Association’s values include:

• Participation
• Team work
• Valuing voluntarism
• Impartial and independent of political parties
• Free from prejudice, anti-discrimination
• Environment-conscious
• Committed to life-long learning

The neighbourhood association was initiated by Vasif Berik, who was the then muhtar in  Çigdem. Muhtars are neighbourhood managers in Turkey who are directly elected in each neighbourhood and who act as a liaison officer between the neighbourhood and the local authority. Given that Cigdem was a new development, there were lots of infrastructure problems  - in particular, there was a lack of community centres and green space. Clearly, these were issues which the muhtar could not solve on his own so he got together with 14 active citizens, including Ferit Uyar (current president) and Fatih Aksoy (current vice-president), and founded the Çigdem Neighbourhood Association in 1996. These early members took initiatives to assist the muhtar with infrastructure problems, such as construction of sidewalks, roads and providing electricity to some areas.

Membership was growing quickly: the initial 14 members quickly increased to 420 members in 2010. Interestingly, many local residents remain members of the association even after moving to other places in Turkey. The association recently gained some members even in Istanbul, who are happy to give financial support to the association through their membership.

Most of the members are very well educated residents with positions in banks, schools, central government and universities. The ‘hard core’ of the association comprises about 20 residents (most of whom are members of the Executive Board) of different ages and professional backgrounds who all bring in their professional expertise to improve the quality of life in the neighbourhood and are engaged in a range of activities. But even the less engaged members benefit from paying their membership fee - about 20 Turkish Lira per year (which is about 9 Euros) - as they get discounts from some local merchants, as well as discounts for theatre/opera/concert tickets, excursion tours, course fees and services provided by the muhtars. For example, a member of the neighbourhood association who trades in tyres gives all members a discount when they buy new tyres in his shop. Furthermore, Melih Karakadioglu, gives members the opportunity to store their winter tyres in a shed of his shop.

The association quickly developed a portfolio of activities which aimed at dealing with pressing problems in the neighbourhood. In its first years, the members planted 2000 trees in the neighbourhood to make the new development more liveable. The association also organised regular clean-ups to pick up litter in the neighbourhood.  Recently, the neighbourhood has become active in gardening and planted a range of trees in a public park.

Furthermore, the association has developed a strong focus on social inclusion. For example, the neighbourhood office also serves as a library. The current stock of 13,000 books has been donated by local residents and provides an important resource for students from low income families. Indeed, the facilities of the association have become too small to display all the books as the member responsible for running the library service, Fatma Engin complains. Another member, F. Buket Polat, has provided literacy courses for women in recent years. Having taken her pension as a teacher, she is happy to be in touch with local people and to do something useful. Asuman Selçuk, a civil servant and a member of the Board, has been volunteering by teaching an English class for the past five years. At the same time, the association sponsors up to eight scholarships to support disadvantaged young people from the neighbourhood to go to university. The scholarships are financed through donations of members (150 Lira per person per month) and allow the students to buy stationery, books and other materials needed to carry out their studies successfully.

Another focus of the association is the improvement of social cohesion in the neighbourhood. The association organises street parties and other social events on a regular basis, not only to bring local residents together but also to provide a platform for other NGOs such as the Red Crescent. Friendly and close ties have also been formed with the Spanish Embassy, which has greatly helped the Association by bringing in two Spanish teachers to contribute to its Spanish course, as well as providing course materials. The association has also been very successful in involving local business – at the last fair in the neighbourhood, local business donated a large number of gifts for a prize draw – for example, the local hairdresser contributed a free hair cut and the local tailor offered free alterations. Another innovative feature is the annual Good Neighbourhood Award given to the block of flats which has engaged most effectively with its residents. Typically, the award committee, consisting of the board members of the neighbourhood association, calls for nominations for the block with the best neighbourly relations and evaluates the nominations received. The block with the best evidence of being socially active receives a little plaque in a ceremony. This year the residents of the winning block were so pleased that they even ran a garden party for the members of the neighbourhood association!

At the same time, the neighbourhood plays an important role in ‘nudging’ the local council to become more forward-thinking. For example, the association has played a key role in providing facilities for recycling and encouraging local residents to bring old batteries, electronic waste, paper and glass to recycling facilities in the neighbourhood office. As a response to the association’s recycling initiative, the local council has now picked up this agenda and started to roll out recycling throughout the area. 

Clearly, ever expanding demand for the activities organised by the neighbourhood association requires better and larger facilities. At present, the neighbourhood office does not even have running water or proper heating. As a result, the association has not been granted permission by the Ministry of Education to provide government-funded training courses, not only because the facilities do not meet legal standards but also because the curricula of  the courses, which are tailored to the needs of the local community, are not in line with the Ministry’s criteria. Therefore, the association has been approaching the local authority to provide them with land – the members will be very happy to build the neighbourhood office themselves, as they already turned a former building shed into the current facility which includes classrooms and a meeting room.

The neighbourhood association has improved the quality of life of its members who feel rewarded and content that they can help fellow citizens. Moreover, board members believe they have evidence that the association has been successful in improving social cohesion. For example, the nine students from disadvantaged families who are supported by the association are now in their third year at university and are expected to gain a university degree in 2011.

Other anecdotal evidence on the outcomes of Çigdemim Neighbourhood Association includes:

One resident turned down a move to a more luxurious and modern apartment which her parents owned in a close-by neighbourhood in Ankara  because she thought so highly of Çigdemim neighbourhood association and there was no neighbourhood association in that area.

One young resident is studying Spanish at the University and also teaching Spanish as a volunteer at the association. Through her involvement in the Association she got an opportunity to meet staff working in the Spanish Embassy. This resulted in her recently being invited to a ‘training the trainers’ course for teaching Spanish. She anticipates that both the experience and the certificate she obtained in this course will help in her further studies.

The neighbourhood association has developed a sound and easy to use performance management system to monitor satisfaction with and effectiveness of social events and training courses. So whenever a resident takes part in any event of the association, he/she will be asked to fill out a feed-back form. The results are analysed by the member responsible and reviewed by the board, with a view to making improvements to the services provided.

In general, satisfaction levels are very high – typically, 90% of participants of training or cultural events indicate they are highly satisfied with the organisation and delivery of the event. Moreover, in terms of outreach the Çigdem Neighbourhood Association exceeded its target of 320 local citizens participating in cultural events outside Ankara in 2010 (achieving 440 participants).

Targets are also defined for the association’s environmental activities. For example, the association wanted to collect 250 kilos of used vegetable oil in the neighbourhood – the actual amount collected was 200 kilo in 2010. The association collected 1958 kilos of used electronic goods in 2010 (compared to its target of 5000 kilos). Clearly, while the amount of recycling is rising, the neighbourhood association believes that it must do even more to improve awareness raising and give incentives to local people to deliver recycling materials to the containers at its office.

One area where the association has exceeded its targets was new membership – the target of 400 was exceeded by 20 in 2010. The board members are positive that with more members they will be able to achieve even more in the coming years.

Given that the neighbourhood association is a truly bottom-up initiative, it involves no costs for government. Quite the opposite: the activities of the neighbourhood office has improved the quality of life of many local residents, and in particular, improved educational levels of disadvantaged groups and reduced the need for some kinds of public sector spending.

The annual budget of the neighbourhood association is about 30.000 Turkish Lira, which mainly comes from membership fees, revenues from activities and donations and sales from recycling. However, the association has more resources than its small budget – the board members invest about 6-7 hours per week in volunteering and the remaining members volunteer on average about 1-2 hours per week, according to the estimates of the vice-president Fatih Aksoy.

The achievements of the Çigdemim Neighbourhood Association show what local people can do to improve the physical environment and quality of social life in a neighbourhood. At the same time, the Turkish experience shows the limits of such community initiatives, if there is not sufficient support provided by the public sector. In this particular case, the lack of appropriate facilities has become a key obstacle for the development of new activities targeted at priority groups such as the elderly and people with disabilities.

As the members recognise themselves, the time has come to join forces with other neighbourhoods and to found wider area associations which represent several neighbourhoods. Furthermore, the association is eager to learn from an exchange of experience with neighbourhood associations in other countries to remain an innovator.