2018 – Open Space Association worked for four years at the Çimenev Science and Arts Center in Istanbul to prevent school absenteeism among children living in deep poverty and to support children at high risk of dropping out of school in remaining in education. Various educational and psychosocial support programs were provided for children and their mothers. Through cooperation among volunteers, universities, and civil society organizations, Çimenev enabled dozens of children, young people, and women to participate in workshops on art, drama, music, coding, human rights, children’s rights, and other subjects.
2020 – With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, thousands of people in casual and precarious work suddenly lost their incomes. For street vendors, waste pickers, cleaners, construction workers, domestic workers, and textile workshop workers, the pandemic became not only a health crisis but also a crisis of access to housing, food, and other basic necessities. In response to calls from families for food, rent, infant formula, and other essentials, the association team established the Deep Poverty Network on 18 March 2020 during the lockdown period.
The Network became one of the first solidarity networks established in Türkiye during the pandemic. Unlike conventional aid models, the Deep Poverty Network directly connected supporters with families experiencing deep poverty. During the lockdown, supporters sent food and essential goods directly to households through online grocery platforms. In a short period of time, the Network reached approximately 3,000 people in 160 neighborhoods across 32 districts of Istanbul.
Today, the Deep Poverty Network is a growing solidarity and research network that brings together volunteers, supporters, academics, local governments, public-sector employees, and people experiencing poverty. We define deep poverty not as a temporary crisis but as a multidimensional human rights violation in which fundamental rights are systematically denied. Through home visits and ongoing fieldwork, the Deep Poverty Network supports households living in deep poverty in meeting their basic needs. We use data and experience from the field to document the dimensions of poverty, develop rights-based social policy recommendations, and share these findings and recommendations with public institutions and local governments to promote holistic and preventive policies.
Our Principles
1. Rights-Based Approach
Deep poverty is fundamentally an issue of inequality and human rights. For this reason, the Deep Poverty Network emphasizes that social support for people experiencing poverty must be grounded in a rights-based approach. Rather than hierarchy-based concepts such as “charity” and “helping,” we argue that “solidarity” and “access to human rights” should be the guiding concepts.
2. Solidarity
The Deep Poverty Network believes in the power of solidarity. We aim to build bridges between supporters and people experiencing deep poverty in order to support them in exercising their fundamental rights and meeting their basic needs, and to contribute to their empowerment.
3. Sustainability
“Deep poverty” is a condition in which long-term income poverty, barriers to exercising fundamental rights and meeting basic needs, and social exclusion intersect. Under these conditions, people’s ability to exercise their rights remains at serious risk for the foreseeable future, and deep poverty can be passed from one generation to the next. The Deep Poverty Network argues that combating poverty requires sustainable policy changes that enable people to break the cycle of poverty.
4. Emergency Response
Poverty violates the fundamental rights to life and development by preventing access to adequate food, safe drinking water, basic hygiene and safety, and education, and by leaving psychosocial needs unmet. This harms people’s physical and emotional well-being and can cause irreversible damage to children’s development in particular. For this reason, alongside sustainable policy change, the Deep Poverty Network emphasizes the urgent responsibility of local and central government bodies to ensure that people living in poverty can exercise their fundamental rights and meet their basic needs.
5. Protection of Human Dignity
We act on the principle that people’s rights, freedoms, and dignity must be protected both when social support is delivered and when these activities are communicated publicly. We oppose the objectification or exploitation of people’s struggles with poverty for any purpose.
6. Participation
The Deep Poverty Network argues that combating poverty requires sustainable policy change at both local and central government levels, taking into account the multidimensional nature of poverty and recognizing people who directly experience poverty as active subjects of the process. We believe that people who directly experience poverty and will be directly affected by these policies, as well as civil society organizations working in the field, must be included in policymaking processes.
7. Open Space
The Deep Poverty Network is made up of volunteers, supporters, staff members, and people experiencing poverty. Ideas and contributions from all these groups have a place in the way the Network operates.
8. Transparency and Accountability
The Deep Poverty Network aims to be transparent and accountable in both its activities and its use of funds.
Team Members
Board of Directors
Melek BAHAT – Chair of the Board
Hülya KURT – Board Member
Elif GÖÇMEN – Board Member
Mine Güliz BAYKAL – Board Member
Özgür Sevgi GÖKTAŞ – Treasurer
Association Team
Hacer FOGGO – Founder / Advisor
Özlem YALÇINKAYA – Fundraising and Project Development
Önder UÇAR – Research and Advocacy Coordinator
Nursel AKGÜL – Intern Mehtap İŞTİ – Intern