Activity Report of the Executive Committee (2014)

Protection of Child Labour

  • CHILD NEWS Channel on “Working Environment” Periodical: We are trying to transfer human right abuses of working children to our readers, in the context of child rights, taking the advantages of the websites of the various international organizations we keep in touch. There are many problems of children which vary from soldier children to kid brides, from tyranny to forced labour, from oppression on education to violence in the family… We regret to announce that both the efforts to solve these problems and the opportunities of us to convey them to the public and the authorities are limited. We are in a struggle to announce child labour and the struggle for them via our websites. The websites as indicated below are the examples:

  • Geographical Atlas of Child Labour Around The World: It’s a website consists of the basic information on this topic and the maps show the distribution of the worst cases of Child Labour.

  • Child Labour Bibliography : It’s a website consists of the publications, identities and summaries on the topic of Child Labour.

  • Child Labour on Media : It serves both statistics and the information of the news about child labour which take place on the five National Newspaper between 1979-2008.

Young Girls’ House

We started to implement a project to be a hope for the Young Girls in Ankara-Türközü-Boztepe Slum in 2003 in order to increase their success in school and to ensure them hold on to the life with having a profession. Within the scope of the project, seen as a way of struggling against child labour, 80 young girls for each year had chance to find a hand to help, a warm welcome and support during 11 months of the year. At the end, there became an expected success and raised awareness. Now; the girls from Boztepe studying in business high schools and universities or having a profession and their families reached the life that they can’t even imagine before. One of them is going to be an engineer soon. This project involved the students in 4.-8. years in the high school. After the 4+4+4 Education Law, including the distribution of the classes, sending the students to distant schools; the organized project unfortunately became impossible to maintain. Despite being able to open new horizons for the young girls, the project had to be finished in June 2014.

Library

Prof.Dr.Nusret H.Fişek Library has many compounds and the contents of the books are available on internet (www.kutuphane.fisek.org.tr). The website is the only one in the context of “occupational health and safety” and “child labour” in Turkey. So, it the only and a rich seam of reference for researchers. These are the other libraries:

  • Social Security,

  • Women,

  • Population,

  • Social Policy,

  • Unions,

  • Social Medicine,

  • General Knowledge.

Protection of the Workers Working in the Worst Situations in terms of Occupational Health and Safety:

The development of the occupational health and safety in the worst workplaces : The project is carried with the 40 workplace which take place in Dökümcüler Complex next to Ankara-Sincan 1. Organized Industrial Site and employe less than 9 employees. With the proposal and the collaboration of Ankara Chamber of Dökümcüler and Fişek Health Services and Research Institute, the project completed its first year. It’s targeted to protect and avoid the workers working in pouring from occupational accidents and diseases with mother care. Within this scope, seven Occupational Safety Specialists were assigned to workplaces. They made the risk assessments, draw up the emergency action plans and provided trainings for workers’ health and safety. Specialists also determined of the problems of the work place and their priorities to solve the problems. They will try to clear up these problems in the course of time and as much as the work owner can afford. In addition, five workplace doctor examined workers. Parallel to the general examination, in order to enlighten the functions of respiration and hearing, the workers are subjected to lung x-ray, lung function test, hearing test. Moreover, the strickens were checked and their prescriptions were filled each workday. We believe that the more common protection of the workers from working conditions punctiliously and concept of “mother benignity” will be, the more pleasing results in terms of occupational health and safety will be gotten and the less the occupational accident(disaster) will be heard.

“Working Environment” Magazine:

Since starting its broadcasting life, “Working Environment” Magazine has never been delayed or stopped but has been continued to be published bimonthly. It’s a respectable magazine among periodicals with its 137.issue in the end of 2014. It’s a peer-reviewed journal with the advisory committee consisted of academic members coming from 10 different universities and different disciplines. The magazine is now available on our website.

Web Sites:

Fişek Institute is trying to share all studies with pulling out all the stops to whole world. Acting charitably, we webify the information and experience of us to make them easily reached via our websites. One of our websites is in English. However, the other websites of us are available for Turkish readers from all over the world. We are also aware of them thanks to our web statistics. We would like to share the statistics with you:

FIŞEK INSTITUTE WEB STATISTICS (ANNUAL)

2014

WEB SİTES

UNIQUE VISITOR

TOTAL VISITOR

PAGE

Child Labour on Media

1.406

2.153

5.993

Socialisation on Media

554

958

2.563

Working Environment

5.331

7.338

23.308

Child Labour Bibliyography

2.057

3.151

9.810

Brain Drain

5.215

8.772

23.032

Fişek Health

13.894

17.685

26.344

Fişek Foundation

9.328

15.330

69.940

Occupational Health and Safety

231.272

304.571

14.853.367

Library

26.076

44.977

127.499

Social Policy

11.114

14.281

29.281

TOTAL

306.247

419.216

1.803.387

Social Policy:

Social policy is a policy mosaic including the improvement of working environment, social medicine and etc. We have a website trying to enlighten this area with the help of articles (sosyalpolitika.fisek.org.tr). Also we are trying to enrich the e-library in it.

Child Labour Exhibition and Volunteers’ Hand Labour Exhibitons on special days(June 12th, World Day Against Child Labour, November 20th Children’s Rights Day):

The volunteers who pull together for the Foundation, exhibit the hand labour products on all occasions. They create opportunity on the special days in order to mold publish opinion and make contributions to the Foundation. These exhibitions brought new volunteers in the Foundation. The public owe a debt of gratitude to the volunteers who are our richness. They are trying to honor the debt to the working children.

Republic Highbrows Portraits and Republic’s Monument Institutions:

Turkey had chances to shoot ahead than the neighbors did with the help of leaders using science and technique as guide. In order to reach from aridness to greenness, many Republic Highbrows and the Institutions founded by them took part. Previously, we became familiar to “Republic’s Monument Institutions” via publishing a series of books. In 2014, we started to research for the “Republic Highbrows”. They made efforts for the Republis and planted the seeds for immortal works which can also be generalized for all progressivist “superior values”. We will serve some examples of the lifes of the leaders who made great efforts for the country with the hope to be exemplariness. It’s now available on: www.portreler.fisek.org.tr

Prof.Dr.Nusret H.Fişek “100 Years Old” Remembrance Ceremony

This year is the 100. Birth year of Prof.Dr.Nusret H.Fişek who is the community health leader and headteachers of health workers. In the Remembrance Ceremony, this theme become prominent. As always, the meeting was held in Çankaya Municipality the Center of Contemporary Arts in Kavaklıdere on 3 November. The Remembrance Ceremony was performed including panel discussions, concerts and award ceremonies.

  • Think-Tank:

This practice, named Reader Workshops, is still ongoing since the Working Environment, as the media organ of our Foundation, was started to be published in 1992. The Reader Workshops targets to broaden horizons, express the opinions and climb over the efforts of brain washing of the dominants. This year, the topic was “Freedom”. It’s available now on our website (https://fisek.org.tr/videolar/)

Mediator: Prof.Dr.A.Gürhan Fişek

Speaker: Mustafa Balbay ( Deputy of İzmir, Newsman)

Arzu Çerkezoğlu (Secretery General of Confederation of Progressive Trade Unions of Turkey)

  • Children’s Human Rights Reward:

This year, Researcher-Writer Erol Çatma is granted the reward. He, put his heart to research the lifes of the miners working in Zonguldak, is also a retired coal miner. He has a huge archive on using child labour in mines and on efforts to force them to work in Ottoman Period thanks to his ability to read old texts and to reach them. He shared them with us in a conference in the Foundation.

  • “Health for All” Caricature Contest Reward:

With the heading of “Nusret Fişek 100 years old” and topic of “Health for All” which is the topic he devoted his life, the caricature contest was attracted great attention. The grand prix was shared by Hicabi Demirci and Kürşat Zaman at the end of evaluations of jury committee consisted of Tan Oral, Oya Fişek, Prof.Dr.A.Gürhan Fişek, Muhammet Şengöz, Emre Yılmaz, İzel Rozental ve Nezih Danyal. The award ceremony of the contest with 52 caricaturist and 93 caricature and the exhibition was conducted in November 3, at the Centre of Contemporary Arts (Kavaklıdere-Ankara). 50 caricatures selected among the caricatures took part in the contest to be published on album with the contributions of Liman Work Union.

  • In Nusret Fişek’s 100. Birth Year, Çankaya Municipality set up a Study Center with his name. Due to this grateful behavior, we presented a plaquet to the Minister of Çankaya Municipality Alper Taşdelen.

  • Munise Aren Painting Exhibition: Yaşne Aren and Haldun Aren, executing their mother Munise Aren’s will, presented her paintings to our Foundation. We shared a selected group of them during the Remembrance Ceremony.

  • Group painting exhibiton: The paintings of Belgin Yasinoğlu, Canan Ecevit, Buluş Aksoy, Ertuğrul Maraşlı, Sibel Karaağaç, Serpil Murat, Gülten Kasapoğlu, Ahmetcan Kasapoğlu, Türkan Tosun, Meltem Kınran, Nil Uzun enlivened the Remembrance Ceremony.

  • Exhibition of “Health for All” Caricature Contest: A group of caricatures touched a chord of visitors at the Center of Contemporary Arts.

  • Peace Concerts: The event have profoundly important and valuable in the Remembrance Ceremonies. Many singers appeared as a guest for the event and we got an earful. This year, outstanding and prestigious singer Yıldız İbrahimova and her pianist colleague Kaan Bıyıkoğlu performed in the context of the event.