Child- Centered Disaster Risk Reduction Capacity Building Workshops for Municipalities
14 April 2025 - 15 April 2025
Şişli, İstanbul
The Child- Centered Disaster Risk Reduction Action Plans for Municipalities Project, implemented by TESEV with the support of UNICEF and in cooperation with the Union of Municipalities of Turkey, aims to support municipalities in Türkiye to develop data- driven child-oriented disaster risk reduction actions. For this purpose, a two-day event, Child- Centered Disaster Risk Reduction Capacity Building Workshops for Municipalities, were organized in Istanbul with the participation of representatives from the project’s pilot municipalities, namely Istanbul, Izmir, Ankara, Gaziantep and Adana.
The first day of the event focused on child-centered disaster risk reduction. Following the opening speeches of UNICEF, Union of Municipalities of Turkey and Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality representatives, UNICEF Program Specialist Gökçen Yılmaz Tokgöz explained the fundamental concepts of disaster risk reduction. The training sessions of the event were followed by Prof. Dr. Özgül Polat’s “IMM-UNICEF Disaster Risk Reduction Needs Analysis”, Director of Legal Affairs of Union of Municipalities of Turkey Lawyer Zeliha Dikyol’s “Role and Responsibilities of Municipalities in Child- Centered Disaster and Emergency”, UNICEF Child Protection Officer Özle Koyuncu’s “Mental Health and Psychosocial Support Activities in Disaster and Emergency Preparedness”, and UNICEF Social Policy Officer Görkem Güner’s “Child-Centered Disaster Risk Reduction National and Local Policy Review and Good Practices” presentations. In the workshop following TESEV Project Manager Gizem Fidan’s speech on child-centered disaster risk reduction action plans, participants evaluated the existing policies and services of municipalities from the perspective of child-focused disaster risk reduction and developed recommendations for the action plans prepared by TESEV.
The second day of the event focused on data-driven policy development. In the training sessions, TESEV Project Manager Gizem Fidan emphasized the importance of evaluating and improving the existing services and activities of the participants in their municipalities from a data-based and child-focused disaster risk reduction perspective with presentations titled “What is data, how does it transform to indicators and information?” and “How to use data for child-focused disaster risk reduction?”. Prof. Dr. Murat Güvenç spoke on data analysis and visualization methods and introduced the demo interactive platform prepared for Istanbul. In the workshop part of the event,
participants analyzed the sample data sets of their municipalities according to the evaluation criteria detailed in the training section and the findings were discussed by all participants.
The action plans will be revised based on the ideas developed with the participation of 44 people at the event. The event is planned to strengthen cooperation between municipal representatives.