Dear KAGİDER friends and partners,

We, as the women under the umbrella of KAGİDER, who work aiming at women empowerment not only economically but also socially and politically, have made a promise on this 8 March International Women’s Day: everyday will be 8 March for us until we have gender equality in the world!

While keeping on our activities for gender equality, every year March is full of activities and projects in which we work together more with new partners. One of these activities has been joining the meetings of the 60thUnited Nations Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) as UN Economic and Social Council Special Advisory and meeting with women organizations from all over the world. This year, among numerous examples of best practices, we presented our “Women First in Soma Education and Production Center” project in partnership with Vodafone Turkey and the Soma Municipality. Our Soma Project became prominent as being a good production model applicable all around the world as well as a good model for implementing the UN Sustainable Development Goals which was also the theme for this year’s CSW meetings. We have also started working on implementation of this model that is produced and run by the women themselves, in refugee camps for the integration of Syrian refugees.

The launch of the Women Vendors Exhibition and Forum (WVEF) was one of our most exciting activities in February. WVEF is organized by the United Nations International Trade Center every year in a different country and the Fifth will be hosted by KAGİDER in Istanbul. It will bring indispensable opportunities for women entrepreneurs. Women entrepreneurs doing business in tourism, textile and garments, information and communication technologies and business services sectors, may apply to WVEF in which women vendors will meet national and international buyers. We aim to host 350 women entrepreneurs in WVEF and to reach 10 million dollars worth of business transaction agreements. Applications will be open until May 15th. I invite all women entrepreneurs doing business in the mentioned sectors to use this opportunity and participate to WVEF.

Sanem Oktar