Engineer Girls of Turkey - Goal 5 Target 5.5 - Goal 8 Target 8.5
Description
Engineer Girls of Turkey (EGT) Project concentrates on developing a private sector driven gender equality mainstreaming program to promote female students participation in engineering professions, and empowering female engineering students. Project evolves around three main components. First component is formulating an analytical framework to show obstacles and developing a long-term evaluation plan. Second component is implementing a support program for both female engineering students and high school students. And, third component is to develop institutional inclusive work models to adopt and advocate gender sensitive approach.
EGT Project aims development of private sector led prototypes for inclusive and sustainable economic growth in the worklife, through gender equality mainstreaming and advocacy. In this manner, the project aims to develop a private sector led support program that promotes female students’ participation in engineering professions and empowers female engineering students.
The beneficiaries are female engineering department students, all high school students, teachers, parents.
The Gender equality mainstreaming component of the project will also be agreat example for other private sector companies.
For the first component of EGT Project, an academic research report titled Women in Engineering in Turkey was prepared through extensive research and individual/focus group interviews, analyzing the current limitations in the country and how EGT Project could address the challenge of reducing these barriers.
The second component of EGT Project has two different activities; one targeting university students and the other targeting high school students. Within the university program or the scholarship program; in total, 102 106 students including two Syrians from electrical and electronic, industrial, civil, mechanical, and environmental and computer science engineering departments benefited from the scholarship programs. Other opportunities made available for the beneficiaries included;
-Training and mentorship opportunities with women engineers from Limak Group and other companies. (EGTs size of mentor pool reached to 180 mentors in three years);
-Internship opportunities in Limak Group and other companies;
-Leadership in Engineering Certificate Program, a mandatory online course that covers professional as well as personal development modules, designed in cooperation with Bogazici University Lifelong Learning Center. (While Leadership in Engineering Certificate Program allows students to comprehend the characteristics of engineering, it also helps leadership and management skills of students through courses that range from organizational behavior to communication skills, international trade and marketing to project planning and change management and from women empowerment to philanthropy etc.);
-Online certified English training courses;
-All EGT students are required to complete 4 hours per month of mandatory civic involvement through their preferred engagement modality. Mandatory volunteerism at EGT aims to develop self-aware and socially responsible individuals who are proactive members of their universities.
-Employment opportunities after graduation, subject to demand from Limak Group and other companies.
For the second component of EGT Project, a high school program. The high school program aligned to the high school curriculum was designed with the partnership of Ministry of Education.The methodology contains various training programs for students attending sophomore and junior high school students, their parents, teachers and counselors. These modalities include seminars, games and races as well as exchanges with role models and target students, parents and teachers. In total, 135 students, 35 teachers, and 56 parents participated in presentations, role model meetings, board game and Virtual Reality (VR) activities. The pilot phase was followed by the Training of Trainers program addressing school counselors and administrators from fifty schools in ten cities in 2018.
For the 3rd component, UNDPs Gender Equality Seal (GES) Program was introduced to Limak. The project will evaluate the current status within the company and make firm-level suggestions according to GES benchmarks. The university and high school programs are evaluated by independent consultants each year, which consists of surveys and interviews with the scholar and mentors and the evaluation of the content and implementation of the high school program.
- Over 20 000 high school students (aged 15 to 16), educators, parents trained through the high school program,
- 106 university students from 36 public universities in 24 cities of Turkey,
- 180 female professionals of engineering volunteering as mentors.
The project is a 5 year project which started in 2016 and planning to be completed in 2020 but regarding the attention the project gets and the effect on the government and policies, it may evolve to a broader partnership program.
The project won Stevie and IPRA awards.
Regarding the project to be a Gender Equality Project, it was well communicated within UNDP as well.
The project will support advocacy actions that will potentially facilitate policy-level transformation through mainstreaming inclusive employment considerations into strategic documents and regular practices of concerned governmental agencies as well as peer companies of Limak Holding. This will include lessons learned from the pilot support programs and may include actions towards inclusion of sustainability and inclusive business actions into current business lines (if possible related supply chains). The reason for targeting enterprises that lead supply chains is to ensure sustainability of the models to be produced. Experience has repeatedly demonstrated that in the absence of commitment of such leading companies, other companies will not be very committed to invest in sustainability and inclusive business actions.
- Prior to project design an academic research has been conducted and a report on ‘Women in Engineering in Turkey’ has been prepared considering all possible limitations, obstacles, opportunities and challenges in the field.<br />
- A gender specialist responsible for providing overall technical oversight and guidance to the design was associated with the Program from the early stages.<br />
- Role modeling and mentoring through female professionals of engineering is one of the genuine characteristics of the project where to have to have a community of women, young women and girls to talk to, to learn with, to learn from is very important in shaping their future personal and professional career
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- Europe
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Contact Information
ceyda alpay, project manager