Foundation of Fevziye Schools, Elementary Public School of Ayazağa Işık
April 20th 2006
Nazire Dedeman
Founder President of Umut Foundation
Speech Text
Hello,
First of all I would like to thank our Dear educators who gave me the opportunity to speak in the Elementary School of Ayazağa Işık and I would like to salute our dear students who gathered here in order to listen to the speech.
Today, we are going to talk all together about the non-governmental organizations, the place of these organizations in our democratic life, the establishment story of Umut foundation and the activities it has done by this time.
Participation, which became gradually an indispensable element of societies, carries the meaning that citizens do not just vote but also participate to the activities of the governments legislation and execution at every level and declare their own ideas.
In our country, when we say democratic participation, parties and their youth and womens branches come first to mind. However, except these, citizens can declare their ideas and opinions with one more way and form associations and foundations in this purpose. So if Non-Governmental Organizations should be defined briefly, they are associations and foundations established within laws in order to declare ideas and opinions of the citizens and to mold public opinion toward their aims.
You know that institutions of the government that provide education, heath, security to the country are called public sector and investors such as supermarkets, hotels, miners are called private sector.
I guess that most of you have heard that Non-Governmental Organizations have been mentioned as a Third Sector. Non-Governmental Organizations, which are placed between private sector and public sector, are involved in activities beneficial to all the society with the strength and support they take from the private sector.
Along with the developing world, private sector institutions and citizens are aware that it is necessary to help the government and with their Social Responsibility feeling, instead of waiting the government to do something for them, they are willing to do something for the government, they are trying to help, guide and support the government in the fields the power of the government is most of the time not completely enough.
The aims of the establishments of Foundations and Associations are to gain favor to the society. They are willing to fulfill their supports in areas where the government power is not enough such as education, health, and environment. Umut Foundation, which I hold the presidency, is operating in both education and permanent peace fields in order to leave to our youth a better and happier world.
You have to be 18 to establish a Foundation or Association and the founders should have common purposes. The most important difference between Foundations and Associations is that Associations can accept members. For Foundations, it is impossible to accept members, but participants and volunteers with consultant status can be accepted with the decision of the Founding Trustees. The second difference is that Foundations are non-profitable.
In the light of the information I mentioned above, we established one of the leading Non-Governmental Organizations of Turkey which is Umut Foundation for the Education of Honorable Leaders in 1993. Our aim was to keep alive the names of four children our families have lost who are Berna, Umut, Onur and Önder and to their memories permanent. Of course, before establishing the Foundation, we have thought other ways to keep alive the memories of our losses
First we thought of establishing facilities which you young can benefit such as library, school, fitness center After realizing this idea, while thinking how could we be more beneficial to all the society? we came with the idea of establishing a Foundation. Then, our family gathered and we decided to establish a Foundation with the contribution of our precious friends.
We formed the members of the general board which are my Father Mehmet Kemal Dedeman, my Mother Şahinur Dedeman, my Brothers Murat Dedeman and Şanver Dedeman, my Daughters Özlem Önal and Özben Önal Yüksel, my Nephew Banu Dedeman and our family friend Prof. Dr. Mehmet Rüştü Gürkaynak with also the Trustees of the Foundation.
After the death of my father in 2001, my nephew Rıfat Dedeman joined us as the successor of Mehmet Kemal Dedeman. Successor, meaning replacing someone, is an accepted method for the non-stop continuation of the Foundation in case the executives of the Foundation cant spare time for the Foundation due to workload. When I will myself be not able to spare time, my successor will replace me and will manage the Foundation. I want to introduce you here my successor. I want you to meet my granddaughter Damla who, I am sure, will manage the Foundation as well as I. The student of your schools 5-F class Damla Soyuer...Damla, could you stand up and say hello to your friends?
Thank you
While establishing the Foundation, the most important issue in our mind was what kind of activities the Foundation should be involved in and what it should do to serve to the development of the society. After long works with the Founding Trustees, I mean with my friends we established the Foundation, we determined the aim of our Foundation.
The aim of Umut Foundation is:
To bring up our youth, who are the safeguards of our future, as individuals who will help developing our country and who will be useful to the humanity, by making them gain personality and skills which will do leadership on the track of Ataturk.;
To make the people adopt the rule of law and assure that they contribute to its implementation;
To make them choose peaceful means to solve disagreements based on the mentality of our Leader Ataturk Peace at Home, Peace in the World;
In this context to teach them reconciliation and their skills to the individuals and to adopt them (to maintain and develop peace)
After determining our aim, we constituted the act of the Foundation, in other word its Constitution, and formed our regulations concerning how to work, how to make our meetings and which issues to deal at first.
In the Foundations act we prepared, we have foreseen the Foundation to be represented by the Administrative Board and this Administrative Board, which is formed by 5 persons, to be responsible of the General Assembly which is the Founding Trustees and for everybody in the Foundation to contribute to the decision making process in a democratic way. Then, we chose our first Administrative Board. I am presiding as a Founding Chairwoman to the Administrative Board which is chosen biennially. The Administration Board of 2005-2007 is formed by Attorney Av. Fikret İlkiz, Sibel Savacı, Banu Dedeman, Özben Önal Yüksel and me.
Then it was the turn to find the logo, the symbol of our Foundation. I mentioned that the Foundations aim is to obtain and to render continuous peace, more importantly to assure the development in peace and to bring up leaders toward those aims. That is why we decided the logo of the Foundation to be a seagull.
The youth told us that the seagull was the symbol of whiteness, pureness, hopefulness and innocence, and that it was the aspiration of being in peace with itself and the nature.
Besides, according to them, seagull was the herald of good news and development. And this was the symbol of the enthusiasm of liberty, self-realization and self-reliance.
Besides being the architect of its own future and holding the responsibility of independent options, Seagull was the enthusiasm of the revival, the salvation from uniformity, the change, the development success within peace and unity. The highest lightening part is that the seagull was the peace of time of the leadership of its home, of its homeland, of its eternal life knowing the point of origin and the break point of its roots, of its dynamism. For this reason we decided our logo to be a seagull and we decided unanimously to use four seagulls in order to symbolize our children we have lost. After determining our logo; it was turn to the activities we were going to realize in order to reach to our aims.
Since nothing could be done properly without rendering continuous peace in the world or in the society, we have set our first period issues in Peace and Reconciliation. Thus, during the first couple years, we have organized various meetings in order to render continuous peace and most importantly to assure social development within peace.
In studies concerning the development of countries neighborhood, we aimed to show to the neighboring countries that transnational problems can be solved by talking instead of war, that resolution with diplomacy is the only effective way to resolve disagreement and that problems can be solved permanently only by this way. Toward those aims, we have organized a series of conferences about Science and Art of Peace Reconciliation in Balkan and Middle East.
Then, while thinking how to assure peace in society, we decided to concentrate on one of the biggest problems of our country: Revolving disagreement and things that could be done against violence And of course, in conjunction with this, individual disarmament.
As you also know, unfortunately, in Turkey, lots of people prefer to fight with each other and to use force against others instead of trying to resolve their problems by talking. This causes a set of sufferings and makes the problems which can be resolved by talking more complicated.
For this reason, we thought to train Guidance teachers about peacemaking for the resolution of disagreement which happens particularly in schools. Lot of teachers participated to our seminars to take the Peacemaking training which means the resolution of problems in a way both sides win without causing violence and then they started to give Peacemaking trainings in their schools.
As Umut Foundation, beside these, we thought about what should be done to render continuous the rule of law and the reconciliation in the society and to prevent the appeal to unlawful ways. First of all, we prepared a Human Rights Education oriented to the youth.
While we have seen that the required importance for Human Rights education is not given in our country, we prepared a student and an educator book concerning Human Rights education called To Be a Citizen with a commission formed under the presidency of the Foundations educational counselor Prof. Dr. Ipek Gürkaynak. We trained our educators in order to train the teachers who will use this book which is prepared with a constructionist method. Our educator cadre constituted of 30 people has trained more than 2.000 teachers and volunteer civilians up to the present. Our book, which is approved by the Ministry of National Education, has been started to be used in Human Rights Education by other non-governmental organizations. This event is one of the most important examples in terms of Non-Governmental Organizations working together.
Human Rights and basic freedoms being in the first place such as
JUSTICE,
PEACE,
RULES OF LAW,
RESPONSIBILITY,
COLLABORATION-DIVISION OF LABOR,
DISAGREEMENT-RECONCILIATION,
DOMESTIC DEMOCRACY,
PARTICIPATION,
PROCTECTION OF THE CHILD IN THE FAMILY,
CONSTITUTION,
RIGHT TO EDUCATION AND LABOR, these books are written to make you think about the underlying concept of those examples and the necessity of being a citizen and to encourage the development of your own opinions. We worked to make these books creative, affecting imagination, good-humored, appealing, which the youth would like it and will read it, containing elements that will raise the level of interest and comprehension and at the same time earthly, systematic, realistic and up-to-date. In other words, we pay attention that you students have fun while learning, that you participate to the formation process of the information and that the information you have learned would stay permanent.
Besides our Human Rights Education project, in order to reach more quickly to a world with full of peace, we have decided to incorporate a set of activities against violence which became a huge problem in the society and against individual armament which is the extreme point of violence.
Violence, meaning people imposing their opinions using force instead of talking, can be committed everywhere unfortunately. In the television programs we are watching, at home, at work, at school We have decided that awareness of the public opinion should be raised and we have started to organize some activities to mold public opinion against armed violence which is the extreme point of violence
While these activities realized with intensive participation and support of the public opinion took a broad part in the press, our primary image in the society has arisen as Individual Disarmament. We are continuing to make efforts with our other areas of activity toward this image which is parallel to our aims.
Every year, awarded contest about Individual Disarmament are organized, we are holding meetings concerning this issue and we are organizing an activity under the name of The Walk of the Silent Shoes to draw the attention of everybody on the importance of this issue.
The aim of this activity organized on the Individual Disarmament Day every year on September 28th, is to protest against individual armament by leaving a pair of shoes on the red carpet by those who are victims of individual armament, who are sensitive people and who are against individual armament and to remember one more time the relatives who have been lost due to individual armament.
After this activity realized with huge participation and after the scientific works which have been realized since 1993 with the participation of psychologists, sociologists, jurists, doctors, police members and academicians who are experts of this problem, government executives are now aware of the danger caused by Individual Armament and how a big threat it is for all of us.
We have decided to collect into a book the results of our meetings and other researches to make it reachable to people who are interested on these issues. Up to the present, we have got 11 publications about these issues which 8 of them are books.
CRIMINOLOGY
INDIVIDUAL DISARMAMENT
FIGHT AGAINST TERROR AND ORGANIZED CRIME IN CONSTITUTIONAL STATE
CARİCATURES OF THE CONTEST GUN IS NOT A JOKE
CRIMINAL LAW REFORM
WHO IS WHO IN EUROPE ON THE SCIENCE AND ART OF PEACE AND RECONCILIATION
TO BE A CITIZEN BOOKS FOR STUDENTS AND EDUCATORS which I just mentioned.
I also mentioned that we are preparing awarded contests every year about the topic Individual Disarmament: Accord a Right for Life
The general purpose of these contests, which was organized first in 1995, is to point out the individual armament problem which Turkey is involved in.
We have organized the scientific research and examination contest about The Reasons of Individual Armament in Turkey, and then the composition contest among high schools about Violence and Gun in Youth and later the caricature contest named Gun is Not a Joke.
What about to see now a part of the caricatures that participate and got a degree in the contest?
Did you like it also? You are able take lessons from these caricatures, arent you?
We have realized the news contest about The Role of The Media in Individual Disarmament following the news and photography contest about Violence and Gun in our Society and then the article contest about The Contribution of the Media to the Peace.
We have organized sculpture contest about Individual Disarmament and Individual Peace after the story of film about Youth and Gun and a short-length film contest.
In 2003, we have organized a 1 minute animated cartoon contest about the topic Individual Disarmament: Accord a Right to Life
Lets watch the film Kiuv which won the first place in this contest.
What do you think friends? Did you like it? What has attracted your attention the most?
Maybe you have heard, it is said that a person holding a hammer is looking a place to hammer. You have seen here also, a person holding a gun is seeing everybody as a target. Our purpose as Foundation is to not let anybody hold a gun whether it is a toy whether a real one and stop people endangering each other Moreover always remember this; when we say gun, we dont just mean revolvers or rifles, but all tools that could hurt or harm someone such as knives, pocketknives, beatings
We have organized a campaign for kids with the help of the pedagogues we are working with. We present different toys and saplings to children that gave us their weapon toys with this campaign named Purify Children from Weapon Toys (Oyuncak Silahlardan Arındırma ÇOSA)
Within the frame of the same project again, in 2004, we tried to raise awareness of the elementary students with a stage play called Would you play with us? and performed by Tiyatro Art. We gave information about the activities we have done, not only to the youth but to the parents also, with this play seen by 227.000 people.
Now lets watch the film which won the second place in a 1 minute animated cartoon contest Lets see what the message is in this one
Did you like this one too? What does it makes us think of?
How sad it is for people to be an instrument for some power, isnt it? They were like the fishes that bite the bait. Someones cupidity and wrong behavior disturbed all of them, made all of them unhappy while they were dancing joyfully
Now its our last films turn .
What do you think about this one?
It is not possible to resolve disagreements by talking in a country where everybody holds a weapon, isnt it? The man in the film turned into a Grim Reaper when he saw that everybody was holding a weapon in his way to work Please, be against violence for everybody in our country in your whole life and support individual disarmament.
We organized last year a Brainstorming Advertisement Campaign after the Painting Contest we organized in 2004. The contest will be in the field of Documentary film this year.
As Umut Foundation, we are striving to obtain a world disarmed, full of peace, far from violence for especially you, the youth with our activities such as the films you have watched, the panels we have organized and the Purification of the Children from Weapon Toys.
By this time, as Foundation, we have won 31 awards, plaquets and honor certificates including Karşıyaka Municipal Human Right award for the Individual Disarmament activities and other works we have done.
So these are the awards Umut Foundation has received as a result of its works done for years.
I didnt talk at all about Umut Foundations sources of income As Umut Foundation, usually most Foundations stand with donations. Umut Foundation is assuring the money it needs for activities through donations. Donations can be institutional as well as individual. For institutional donations, sponsors meaning supporters are searched. Firstly the project developed is presented to the responsible of the issue, and then it is told to private public enterprises which are asked to support this activity.
Individual donations are done by people and institutions sensitive to this issue. We are giving a tree certification to each donator from the Umut Forestry we own. Last year we had 700 new donators.
I think that I have told everything but if you want to talk about the Foundation to your parent and if you want to share the films and caricatures you have watched with your family, you can find detailed information about Umut Foundation in our internet site which is www.umut.org.tr...All our works are available in our site updated every week. Our pages visited by about 177.800 people by this time are sent to 10.000 people in electronic environment every week. 16.315 people have signed in our site until now to say No to Individual Arming
Children, I want you to enter to the web site of Umut Foundation and say No to Individual Arming
If we look shortly to the activities done up to this time by Umut Foundation; by the end of 2005
WE HAVE TRAVELED 148.000 KM.
WE HAVE MADE 52 MEETINGS.
WE HAVE ORGANIZED 1 AWARD-WINING CONTEST
THE SILENT SHOES HAS WALKED 5 TIMES
WE HAVE ORGANIZED 4 CAMPAIGNS.
257.370 PEOPLE PARTICIPATED TO OUR ACTIVITIES.
13 PUBLICATIONS WHICH 8 OF THEM IS A BOOK
177.800 PEOPLE VISITED OUR WEB SITE.
WE HAVE DONATED 20.500 BOOKS.
22.800 SAPLINGS ARE PLANTED TO UMUT FORESTRY.
WE HAVE RECEIVED 31 PLAQUETS, AWARDS AND HONOR CERTIFICATIONS.
WE HAVE PRODUCED ABOUT 1,660,000 YTL OF ADDED-VALUE.
WE GAVE 66 TRAININGS.
WE HAVE TRAINED 2.100 PEOPLE.
WE HAVE REALIZED ACTIVITIES IN 15 CITIES IN TURKEY AND IN 7 COUTRIES ABROAD, TOTALLY 118 ACTIVITIES
OUR STUDIES WAS ABOUT 1.500 TIMES IN THE MEDIA.
Dear students, it was very pleasant for me to meet you Before leaving I would like to ask one last thing, please dont lose your faith in the rule of law now and at the age adult. Try always to be reconciliatory with your friends, comrades, families, co-workers. Try to solve problems with peaceful means; do your best for the social peace. Is it ok my dears?
Before ending my speech, I would like to thank dear executives of the Foundation of Fevziye Schools Elementary Public School of Ayazağa Işık, all the teachers and you, the students, for listening me. I believe that we are a bit more close to a world that all of us hope to be we should not preserve our efforts and our courage.
My dear children, I embrace all of you and say for futures full of hope