We are delighted to share a blog written by student Hayat Anadolu from Aci Schools, who is part of a team delivering a Global Goals project for the 2019-20 Global Goals Competition.
Their project is among over 957 social action projects currently running as part of the GSL movement and we are excited to be supporting them to design and lead positive social change in their community.
We dream safer and happier children in our neighborhood and to make Bahcekoy greater together.
Project Overview
Hi! We are Safe Place Makers from İstanbul, Turkey. Our aim in this project is to make safe places for children in Bahçeköy/Istanbul. Our goal is number 11 which is Sustainable Cities and Communities. Our problem was in Bahçeköy kids couldn’t play freely on the park and, couldn’t walk on the streets to their school safely because there was no sidewalk. The school street is also used by cars that’s why it is dangerous for kids. There is also a park there and it is used frequently, but the playing areas are broken, and the walls were vandalized in the past. We want the park and the school road to be child friendly. So, we made a plan…
Our Journey
We planned about what we were going to do and started with researching. First, we read about safe place and placemaking. Then we looked at some good placemaking examples like Washington Square Park. Then we needed to see the Playground and Street, so we went to investigate the places. When we were investing the park, we saw three kids and interviewed them they gave us their thoughts. We took pictures for later. We then went to the schools Street it was very narrow and it was open to traffic. We made notes and returned to school.
We invited Türkân Efe School to our school, 10 students joined us and gave us ideas because they live in that area and often use the park and street. They told us about the pros and cons about both places. We drew the playground and added fun details and our ideas. They left and we analyzed the drawn papers. We came up with additions. Then we tested our schools students’ pre-knowledge we made survey about sustainable cities.
When all of the results came in, we read all of the answers, and analyzed it again we were making a PowerPoint about the questions and their right answers but Covid-19 appeared and we couldn’t continue.
The Next Chapter
We are currently in break because of Covid-19 but when the break ends, we will go to the park paint the walls and put some trash cans around, so people don’t litter everywhere. We are also going to put some cat houses around so the stray cats can have a home. We are going to put extinct animals’ characters and they are going to tell facts about litter and global warming. So, the little kids can learn facts at a young age. İf they learn these facts at a young age they can be more responsible about the future.
For the schools street we are going to make some fluorescent stickers for the kids to stick to their backpack so when cars pass in the dark the stickers will reflect light and they will not hit any kids or enfants. We are looking forward to doing these activities and spread awareness to the citizens.
The 2019-20 GSL Global Goals Competition is now open and runs until June 2020. If you belong to one of the 700+ teams of students currently delivering a social action project as part of the competition we would love to hear from you and feature your blog and project photos on our website to inspire others.
