Seasonal Migrant Worker Youth Program

Organization:

Mevsimlik Tarim Iscilerinin Haklarinin Korunmasi ve Gelistirilmesi Dernegi (in cooperation with Harran University)

Name of Project:

Seasonal Migrant Worker Youth Program

Grant Amount:

$6,500 

Website:

http://www.metider.org.tr/

    
Leadership:

Dr. Zeynep Simsek, a faculty member at the Harran University Medical School, specializes in Social Health Sciences. Her research and areas of expertise involves examining societal structures and their effects on the development of children and youth, specifically in Sanliurfa, a city in Eastern Turkey. Dr. Simsek has been working on projects that concern youth health and migratory workers' health and social rights issues.    

Primary Purpose of the Project:

The primary purpose was to reduce social exclusion of seasonal migrant workers from the rest of society. To this end, the project informed seasonal migrants of their rights, identifying the services to which they are entitled, facilitating their use of these services and finally building the necessary skills to enable them to assert their rights to avail of public sector services.

Needs that will be addressed:

Seasonal migration is associated with considerable social vulnerability. Seasonal migrant workers often remain socially excluded in the destination cities and have considerably less access to public services including health and education, and even to such basic facilities as housing, water and food security.

The project aimed to enable seasonal migrants to recognize their entitlement and to access available public sector health, education and other social services.

Population Targeted: Children of Seasonal migrant workers (Ages between 15-20)

Core Project Activities:

The project addressed the socio-economic needs of seasonal migrant workers in Sanliurfa.

Through the training program of this project, 25 young persons were actively informed about issues such as health, gender equality and access to education, availability of social services, their rights and entitlements to government services. 25 youth took part in a training over the course of 5 days. An important multiplier effect of this project is that each of the trained youth will pass on this information and the new perspectives obtained to 25 other young people, ultimately reaching out to 625 people and their families and helping communities to be more aware of their rights and entitlements.

In order to assess the success of the program, participants were asked to take a survey before and after the completion of the program.

Area-focus:  Youth Development and Education 

Outcomes:

• 625 seasonal migrant worker youth participated in peer-to-peer education on their social and economic rights, and their entitlement to health, education and other services.
• 80% of the participants showed an improvement in their knowledge of their rights and entitlements.
• 625 youth and their families have better standards of living and can better identify the services to which they are entitled.
• The societal exclusion that seasonal migrant workers face in Sanliurfa will be reduced eventually with increased access to education.
• The results of the project will allow researchers to make recommendations for policy changes regarding the lifestyle of migratory agriculture workers found not only in Sanliurfa but also in many other cities in Turkey.