Hülya Adak, 17 April 2020
In SU Gender, we have been creating articles, reports, literary and theater works, animations and movies on our subjects for years upon our reviews and evaluations without ready answers by using experimental and original methods and creating our own formulas. The fact that our subjects are multi-disciplinary, bringing together academia and activism, and considering research and pedagogy as a whole, has determined for years the direction of our collaborations in the Purple Certificate, Purple File, Curious Steps, Transformative Activism, Gender Equality Programs, and Adult Education and EDU, and our internationalization goals. When the COVID 19 pandemic first started, it was not something we had experienced before, but we eventually found ourselves in a process that we created our own way of existence. In the last four weeks, we have increased the number of meetings and conversations in which we share all the factors that affect us, from the changing world order to the changes in our own lives, and one of our main goals is to strengthen our communication. As SU Gender emphasized, in this period, we think that a human-oriented working order should be one of the basic principles for all organizations. The health of all our employees and friends is very important and more important than the way any project is implemented or deadlines. We think that this difficult process offers various opportunities for all organizations in the transition from a business-oriented and competition-oriented working order to a solidarity-oriented and egalitarian working order.
While we had to increase our working hours during the transition to online meetings and training, we also tried all the physical and mental healing methods that were good for us when we did not work. The Curious Steps meetings where we talked about all aspects of the pandemic, the seeds of awareness where we re-interpreted our lives with various methods of poetry, music and philosophy, the COVID diaries we kept about isolation encouraged us to conceptualize the radical change we were going through and to open the doors of inspiration and hope for the future.
We postponed some of our events during the unexpected change we had to experience in the middle of March, but we then started to organize talks and webinar series on "Pandemic, Solidarity and Gender" in order to conceptualize our existing situation with all our stakeholders. We held many meetings where we came together and exchanged our individual experience with the stakeholders in each of our programs (teachers, faculty members, students, civil society workers). It is true that not being together face to face in a physical place affects us a lot. Yet, we think that this is a new era with online meetings and events. We believe that those who cannot attend venue events can join us on online platforms, that it will be easier to invite a speaker or educator who is a foreigner living abroad or does not reside in Istanbul, that we can organize joint events more frequently with our international partners, that we can create a greater number of solidarity networks with our events, and that we can propose solutions to possible cases of unjust suffering working with the organizations we collaborate.
We will be using our website, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter accounts as communication channels instead of posters we used to elaborately design to announce our events, trainings and programs. On this site, you can find information about our events and links to, and announcements about, many articles, books and interviews about gender, pandemic, solidarity and hope.
I would like to express once again how grateful we are to our collaborators, especially the Sabancı Foundation, Sigrid Rausing Trust and Chrest Foundation, for their flexibility, dedication, care and solidarity during the COVID 19 pandemic. The COVID 19 pandemic can be a very important process to discover new collaborations and new studies as well as support mechanisms unique to this period. In the meantime, we will continue our efforts prioritizing creativity, flexibility and solidarity in cooperation with our collaborators. All the best...