What’s Up What’s Not?!

What’s Up What’s Not?!: A Youth Project

Project Term: August 2016 – August 2017

What’s Up What’s Not?! is the first youth project of the Association Struggle Against Sexual Violence. The project is designed to inform both educators and students about topics such as gender-based violence, discrimination, bullying, cyber violence, dating violence and safe relationships with the goal of reducing most violent incidents. It follows a protective-preventative model. We are working with different high schools of Istanbul in cooperation with their school counseling units in the 2016-2017 academic year. At the end of this project, we aim to produce a research report and a handbook for counsellors and psychological counselors.

Why Such a Project:

-Despite the fact that schools are one main places in which young people socialize, and despite the fact that flirting is a significant and unignorable aspect of young people’s sexual, emotional and social development, this topic cannot be adequately discussed in schools.

-There is a lack of methods and materials about violence for educators who work with young people.

-There is an increased incidence of violence in educational environments and there is a normalization of violence among young people.

-In the digital / visual world in which we live, there is a lack of creative and empowering visual materials about violence with a language and approach which is appropriate to young people during a key developmental period in their lives.

– Because this is a protective-preventive project.

Purposes of the project:

-To produce data on the attitudes and perceptions of young people related to dating violence, bullying, and cyber violence.

-To organize workshops with young people to increase their knowledge and awareness about dating violence, bullying, cyber violence and gender-based violence.

-To increase the capabilities of counsellors and branch teachers to struggle against dating violence, bullying, and cyber violence.

-To produce empowering visual materials to use in the field that have youth-appropriate language and approaches, and that meet the needs of the digital / visual world in which we live.

-To prepare a handbook that we will present to counsellors for their use.

-To contribute to a more non-violent school culture overall.