The need for professional, effective, and coherent social cohesion measures remains high in Türkiye. One can witness a somewhat growing demand for social cohesion activities due to rising tensions between the Turkish population and the SuTP’s amidst a struggling economy and increasingly critically local politics. However, many local and international organizations, active in Türkiye, are working to improve the socio-economic relief of SuTP, lack knowledge and expertise, and train staff in the sphere of social cohesion. Thus, the positive effects of the socio-economic activities of many locally active organizations, such as Turkish NGO’s, Turkish-Syrian NGO’s, international NGO’s, chambers of commerce and industry, and other actors such as municipalities, sometimes do not reach their full aim, of improving the living conditions of SuTP and members of the host communities holistically, e.g., economically and with regards to social integration. There is a high demand for those organizations for additional measures to be taken to improve their expertise in social cohesion.
The PEP program strengthened the employment prospects of Syrian refugees and the host community members in the provinces and municipalities hosting high numbers of refugees. The project enabled the target groups and their families, especially vulnerable households, to generate income in short to medium term, while at the same time stabilizing the host communities and promoting peaceful coexistence between Syrian refugees and the local population.
The project provided skills development and facilitated access to decent work for the target groups, also, strengthened the supply side of the private sector. To reach this goal, LEAP offered PEP’s implementing partners’ additional training activities for their project staff and other social cohesion activities for the beneficiaries of their specific project (SuTP and Turkish members of the host community).
Promoting/mainstreaming social cohesion and safeguarding social inclusion between refugee and host community members requires adopting a comprehensive gender-balanced approach that addresses the “Bridges and Barriers to Inclusion & Participation”: the primary drivers of tension, the structural vulnerability and the power dynamics on different fronts (social, economic and cultural) and their manifestations at (i) Microsystems Level (e.g., families, friends); (ii) Organizations Level (e.g., schools, workplaces); (iii) Localities Level (e.g., neighborhoods, towns, hard-to-reach rural areas); and (iv) Macrosystems Level (e.g., cultures, governments, social mediums, belief systems).
The pilot 6-month project, implemented between January 2020 and June 2020 is co-implemented with Gesellschaft für Internatonale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH and funded by Bundesministerium für Internationale Zusamenarbeit und Entwicklung (BMZ) and implemented by in Türkiye.