The 6th BEKAM Academy seminars were hosted by Hacettepe University Dr. Instructor Member It was held at BEKAM on Saturday, November 26 with the topic of "Civil Society Digitalization" by Niray Tunçel.

BEKAM continues to bring together expert researchers and participants who are interested in the subject by organizing an 8-week program with the title "DIGITAL LITERACY AND TRANSFORMATION SKILLS".

In the seminar held this week, Niray Tunçel talked about the “Digitalization of Civil Society” project prepared by the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Hacettepe University and the General Directorate of Civil Society Relations.

“Our project has three scopes; First of all, to what extent have social institutions been able to do digitalization? Second, from the point of view of civil society, how can they do this abroad? We examined practices in about eight countries. Thirdly, at what stages and what should the General Directorate of Civil Society Relations do in terms of digitalization? In addition, we organized three workshops. In this workshop, except for the closing session, we had face-to-face meetings with representatives from non-governmental organizations, and we obtained data by negotiating the issues that need to be discussed.”

Later, speaking at the Seminar, Tunçel shared the data by giving information about the surveys on digitalization for non-governmental organizations.

Tunçel said, “In our surveys, we primarily tried to measure the level of use of digital tools and methods by non-governmental organizations, their skills and attitudes in this regard. What areas do they need? What are the perceived barriers to digitization? What kind of training do they want to receive in this field? We used general topics such as:

Associations Information System (DERBIS); It is a system that transfers the responsibilities that it is obliged to fulfill as a non-governmental organization directly to the General Directorate of Civil Society Relations. It provides information exchange between the institution and associations. We used this system, the Ministry of Interior shared our surveys there. Because our surveys were long, most associations did not complete them. When we look at the survey results, only 25.61% of NGOs have a security policy regarding digital data. A quarter of them say they have such a policy, while 50% say they don't, and the rest are unaware that such a policy exists.

69% of internet in Turkey comes from mobile devices. It was at 80% during the pandemic period. NGOs often turn to socially disadvantaged groups. They are the main target audiences, but unfortunately, the websites of NGOs are not accessible for obstacles, for example, they are not designed with the visually and hearing impaired in mind. This is not only the problem of NGOs, we see that the websites of even very large corporate companies are lacking in this sense.

According to surveys, 55% of NGOs have social media accounts. We can say that religious associations are the weakest area in terms of digitalization when we encounter other NGO members. The most used social media accounts by NGOs are; WhatsApp, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook.

If you have a social media sharing strategy, you can share from social media at the right intervals. If you do not have a strategy, your rate of posting to the right intervals decreases. In this sense, NGO members need to have a social media sharing strategy.” The seminar ended after a question and answer session.

After the seminar, Tunçel toured our Foundation center and received information about our works and projects.