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April 2003

News our activities

We would like to give you, dear members and friends, as always, information about activities in our society. Earlier this happened with the little newspaper Iste akyaka". Unfortunately for legal reasons we have to present our news now in the more simple form of a "members letter".

Concerning the Biyo-akyaka project:

  • After the deplorable fire event in our office, after interim reports and the approval of the UNDP co-ordinators, we began again working with the project. Our regional team, -consisting of two community representatives and two village representatives of the included project area- met again and searched for new possibilities of collaboration.
  • A preliminary talk with exchange of ideas was held. Generally the alternative tourism possibilities available in the region should be animated whereby in the future all connected communities and villages will collaborate in the frame of their possibilities with a precise co-ordination. With these plans and with the management of the environment we want to come to a better form of the protection of the biological diversity in our region. Through these measures, we expect also new possibilities for the communities and villages lying outside of Akyaka through alternative tourism.
  • From 12th - 13 of April we went to Ankara to meet with other project leaders of GEF- projects. During the two-day meeting, we found based on the lively discussions with the other NGO’s new possibilities of collaboration for our project region. Our project was introduced with a presentation about communication difficulties and its overcoming in multi stakeholder projects.

Culture and art:

  • We renovated parts of the Nail Cakirhan - Halet Çambel culture and art house and our office.
  • The floors of the showroom and the office, all doors and the stairways were ready made for new exhibitions.
  • - The Nail Cakirhan street passing by our building got a new paving by our community administration. We thank the mayor and all the ones that work for the community, to provide a nice new and clean street for the openings of the exhibitions.
  • - The exhibition program for 2003 is finished, you find it attached. In addition we held two meetings with our artists in the Idyma restaurant and discussed their proposals.

Environment and nature protection:

  • - on 2nd February, we showed at the occasion of the "World Wetland Day" documentary about birds in the Yücelen hotel. The interest was pleasingly great, Ahmet Eryigit of the SPA agency as well as Heike THOL-SCHMITZ showed presentations about the importance of the biological diversity in respect to the wetlands of our region.
  • -We take part as advisors in two nature protection projects in Fethiye and Bodrum as well as the regular bird observations. The developments are pleasing.
  • In context with the "biological and natural sources management project "by the environmental ministry our society was invited as a representative of the southern Aegean to Ankara. With pride, because we were one of only 16 invited NGO’s all over Turkey.
  • - Our weekly monitoring in the wetlands of Akyaka was continued. –
  • The new atlas project has as a goal to produce a national map for the breeding places of the birds of Turkey. We took part in training and participated in first steps concerning this national project. - #
  • The Akcapinar "stork village project", included in our running UNDP GEF / SGP project started successfully. In order to attract the attention of the people in our region, we arranged for this purpose on Sunday, the 20 April 2003 a stork-observation-walk in Akcapinar at 11.00 a.m. Let us not forget -, most guests from Europe coming out here do not know storks but only from documentaries..

Further activities of the society:

  • the printed material destroyed in the office fire was delivered again to be reprinted.
  • Unfortunately we lost again, like every year, some of our members. We had to delete some memberships, because the yearly fees were not paid for more than two years.
  • We won some new members however again in addition, so that we can count at present 128 ordinary and 58 honourable members (01.05.2003). –
  • Our Web site (www.akyaka.org) is updated periodically and became gradually an extensive source of information. We are striving to answer the questions and proposals that reach us from Turkey and many other parts of the world. On the website produced and updated by our webmaster Thomas SCHMITZ, you can find, amongst other, information about daily events and all about our activities.

Thanks, that you are at our side and support us.

With many greeting from Akyaka

For the Society of the Friends of akyaka Akyaka

Thomas Schmitz