Adolescent girls face a variety of challenges that affect their physical, emotional, and social development in Türkiye. These issues range from access to quality education to child labor, child marriage and physical abuse and neglect. To overcome these challenges, an ecosystem approach that targets the child as well as all the actors in her life is needed to create meaning and sustainable change.
SD adopts a Girl-Centered Design approach to create safe, supportive ecosystems that enhance girls’ wellbeing. We believe a just and inclusive world begins by centering girls in the design of the programs, policies, and environments that shape their lives. This approach prioritizes their unique needs, voices, and aspirations, ensuring they are active participants in shaping their futures. Through interdisciplinary collaboration, research-driven interventions and collective impact models, we aim to make girl-centered thinking a standard in education, community development, and policy-making. Participatory tools like Photovoice and Our Living Environment help children express their experiences creatively. We co-design safe spaces with girls, ensuring these reflect their insights and empower them. To further strengthen their role in decision-making, we are establishing a Girls’ Advisory Team, enabling them to directly contribute to the solutions that affect their lives.
SD aims to scale and transfer its models to public institutions, local organizations and program alumni to ensure sustainability. Programs are co-designed with collective impact partners and piloted in SD implementation areas before scaling. To build an inclusive ecosystem, SD has established 6 Support and Solution Circles, a Teacher Community, a Local Community, and 5 Children’s Hubs across 4 cities. The establishment of a Girls’ Advisory Team ensures that children’s voices are heard. For 2025-2028, SD will continue to serve as a backbone organization for Collective Impact, focusing on strengthening program quality and scalability. The goal is to reach 2,799 children and 198 adults through multi-layered interventions and 32,400 children and 570 adults through single, short-term efforts.
SD welcomes to share our Girl-Centered Design and Collective Impact approach with other NGOs. You may access the Support and Solution Circles Implementation Guide and the Child-centered Communication Manual through our website, and adapt them to suit the needs of your organization. You can also visit our girl-centered design website. https://kizcocukodaklitasarim.org/
As the documents and the girl-centered design website are available in Turkish, please do not hesitate to contact us should you require any assistance.
