Hülya Denizalp is one of the experts on social entrepreneurship and social innovation. She is the co-founder of GENÇTUR, an organization which encourages educational, intercultural exchange through travel and international volunteer projects.
She established the Turkish branch of Ashoka social entrepreneurship network in 2004. She is also co-founder of Turkey Social Entrepreneurship Platform and is currently the vice president of STGM (Civil Society Development Center).
She is also mentoring young social entrepreneurs as well, as a lecturer at Isik University for the Social Entrepreneurship course.
She begun to run radio program about social entrepreneurship at not profit radio channel which is called AÇIK RADYO ( www.acikradyo.com.tr )
Hulya has been mentoring SIE Country Partner Informal Education Youth Centre (Yasayarak Ogrenme Merkezi-YASÖM) where they are delivering several social projects like personal and social development activities like nature protection awareness, gender issues, foreign language speaking clubs and social inclusion projects.
What's the most important faculty that an entrepreneur needs? And what's the most important thing he/she needs to take into account while starting to work on his/her idea?
If you are an entrepreneur, you should have several skills which are creativity, capacity of innovation and determinacy. But if you want to be a social entrepreneur, you should use all those skills for the society, instead of focusing on your own. This is a conflictive issue nowadays, not only in Turkey but all over the world.
How is active participation nowadays in Turkey? Why do you think people are interested? And the ones who are not interested, why they're not?
Everyone should be both able to listen and be an active participant when it comes to communitarian social and political decisions. Everyone should feel invited to express and tak e an active role in society.
What social issues is Turkey trying to overcome with the social entrepreneurship agenda?
There are different problems and needs for different aspects. While some people are trying to solve poverty by addressing things like agricultural development issues, some people are trying to solve problems of white collar people in the business world.
But if you want to know what the major problem of Turkey is, it's not different than general problems of the world, like;
o Economic development
o Environmental
o Health
o Social exclusion
o Gender issue
o Ethnic
How is ?social innovation' understood?as a term, and as a practice?in Turkey?
It is becoming very popular. But I'm afraid the meaning is not well understood in reality. Because the people who are well educated do not understand the needs and problems of the society. You cannot solve the problem if you really can't get in it, I believe.
Most of the intellectuals understand social innovation equals doing something different, but not that it's needed. And especially, they use European or American as examples, which usually do not fit to our society.
You are co-founder of STGM, What does STGM mean? Which are the main changes you would like to operate in the society? How would you summarize what STGM is in a sentence or few words?
The vision of Association of Civil Society Development Centre is a ?Strong and Democratic Civil Society.'
The mission of the STGM targeting the attainment of a strong and democratic civil society is to carry out advocacy, campaign, research, training and lobbying activities in its priority target areas in order to:
- ensure the development of participation and democracy in civil society,
- strengthen organizational capacity and autonomy,
- make the voice of civil society heard in decision making processes.
What are the STGM main values?
1. in no circumstances considers itself and acts as a top level union,
2. in no circumstances interferes in internal affairs of civil society organisations,
3. is impartial to and independent of third parties,
4. upholds transparency and accountability at all levels and in all of its activities,
5. respects all rights and freedoms recognised by international conventions,
6. takes stand against all forms of discrimination while considering differences and diversity as a source of richness,
7. is sensitive to the integrity of life and ecosystem values in the context of production and consumption patterns,
8. adopts participatory and pluralistic democracy as a mode of life,
9. is an organisation embedded in practical life, seeking fast and feasible solutions.
Why and when did you decide to establish STGM?
After Sunay Demircan came forward with the original idea, 13 people gathered together in order work on its development and discuss how to create and settle it down. It was in 2004 and I then became co-founder of STGM, a civil society capacity development centre.
Which were the main challenges you had to face at the beginning?
One of the first steps which need to be faced is going step from the word to the action, and this is the main challenge. If you are not experienced, if you have not had the opportunity to practice, you don't know how to face things in a complete way. This is what we are calling learning by living. So we were aiming to support others NGO's capacity development, but we still didn't know it would be that hard if without having previously created our own capacity. The first centre, for example, was established in Ankara, as capital of the country, but people who wanted to be active in the organizations in Ankara didn't have much experience about management.
At the beginning we had a great aim and the opportunity do it; we had financial support by EU and some local sponsors. But STGM was the first project in all East Europe, and after its foundation other organizations took it as a model and started establishing similar capacity development centres. And because of being the first ones going on this kind of initiative, it was a big challenge for us and we had to exercise and examine everything for the first time.
Which are the main differences you can now notice between your first experiences and what's going on nowadays?
At the beginning we were aiming a big thing and everything was new for us, but now we are more settled down, logical and experienced, and we have learnt what we can or cannot do. Nowadays we are taking a very serious role to change the Turkish Constitution, so we are trying to put all the NGO's together in order to gather the power which would influence the government. And it works like that, we are sometimes walking three steps forward, sometimes one step behind, but still getting more and more experience and improving ourselves.
You are also mentoring Informal Education Center. What do you mean by ?informal education?' What kind of social change do you want to see through informal education?
Today, it's really easy to reach a lot of information through Google. I know many young people who "have" the information but don't understand what it is for or how it should be used.
I realize that I learnt many things through not only reading but living. Reading gives intellectual knowledge, but if you don't put it in practice you cannot really understand. That's why I believe in informal education.
Learning by doing is really important.
The background for many of our socially disadvantaged youth is from countryside which means opposite life from Istanbul or other cosmopolitan city life. Istanbul city life is like some European life standards but our traditional life is more Eastern oriented. Therefore, youngsters who are grown up in traditional family cannot easily adapt to big city life. So we try to build a bridge to give opportunities to them.
Our goal is to help these individuals become self initiative, active citizens and have a sense of social responsibility through informal education.
You have been involved in starting, maintaining and developing a wide range of social programs, initiatives, and organizations in Turkey. Has there been a common thread between them? What kind of support have they needed to succeed?
Turkey's population is very young. 46 percent of the population is under 24 years old. Also, as I mentioned above, there are big differences between the lifestyles and socio-economical situation of the youth living in Turkey. Therefore, social exclusion is becoming a bigger problem every day.
Helping to build a bridge for young people to develop their skills and abilities for gaining self-confidence and having chances for better opportunities they will gain hope and inclusion within the community they need. This will help with the social development of the country.
How can the Social Innovation Europe initiative be most useful to you and the organizations you are working with?
I think we should come together and discuss what we can do together. Because I believe cultural differences can help broaden everybody's perspective and help our personal development if we can use it in the right way.
Language is a big barrier for socio-economically disadvantaged people to communicate with foreigners. That's why we're doing the "East-West Camp" as GENÇTUR for breaking the barriers between young people from whole over the world and socially disadvantaged young people from Turkey. You might able to send some volunteers to our East-West Camp to communicate with our volunteers who are between 18-24 years old. The next camp will take place in 26 July - 16 August 2012.
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