İzmir Çiğli Evka-2 Women’s Cultural Association (ÇEKEV)

ÇEKEV is located in the Evka 2 neighbourhood, but its activities include the whole of the town of Çiğli. The primary target audience of our centre are women who are labourers, retired from work, or  are employed in housework, but we have a perspective to unite all women.

Our association was founded after two years of debate over its draft project and a campaign which attracted 1500 signatures. As of now we have 350 registered members. We aim to make all our signees members in due course, and we also see all the women in our area as potential members.

The aims of our centre are:

• Women have moved into our neighbourhood from all across the country, and we aim to introduce them to each other and create an environment of peace, sisterhood, and solidarity, and to create a contemporary town culture.
• To organise events that will contribute to the furthering of women’s knowledge on economics, politics, and social, cultural, and sports activities.
• To create a peaceful environment which women can visit, have a cup of tea, read papers or books, and chat together.
• To bring women out of the kitchen and into the public sphere, to create productive groups and take steps for their participation in social production.
• To form production cooperatives.
• To organise panels, seminars, and conferences on the wellbeing of mothers and children, female health, school-family relationships, parental relationships, relationships between couples, women and child psychology, recent developments, women’s issues, democracy, and national issues.
• To organise handcrafts and vocational courses to help women gain their financial independence.
• To reach distributors who provide women with handiwork to do at home, to purchase the materials and provide them directly to the women who create the wares so that the profit gained by the middleman enters directly into the woman’s pocket.
• To create cooperatives for women who do work at home. To form organisations to create solutions for the problems they face.
• To run classes on music, folk dances, choir, theatre, handcrafts and practical skills and to hold events that will help women’s self-actualisation and self-respect are one of our primary aims.

We also provide women and children of the neighbourhood with saz, guitar, and acting lessons.

We offer legal counselling to abused women and refer them to bar associations, ŞÖNİMs, local councils, and other public institutions. We women with education on their legal rights and how to use those rights. We collect second hand clothes and items and distribute them amongst destitute women and children. We provide free of charge tutelage to disadvantaged children. We try to play an active part and contribute to every event to further women’s rights and freedoms in our city, region, and country.