The researchers’ night 2015 coordinated by Istanbul Aydin University Department of Faculty of Education. Ayşegül Kınık Topalsan was an Executive Member of this event and gave her support to facilitate and simplify the possible problems. At the same time, all faculty of Educations’ lecturers gave their full support for organization of the researchers’ night.
There were two officers, Eyüp Cengiz Üstdağ and Sinem Çepni from project department worked on the financial issues such as payments, subcontracting, etc. In addition, Dr Mustafa Aydın (Board of Trustees Chairman, IAU) provided activity halls, main garden, classses, amphi theatre, all laboroties and technical tools in Istanbul Aydin University. Our rector, Prof. Dr. Yadigâr İzmirli confirmed that she intend to give support in organization and execution activities. President of Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality, Kadir Topbaş provided assistance in transportation and support Project team members. Istanbul City National Education Directorate, Dr Muammer Yıldız provided approval of the participants&students from schools located in Istanbul again.
We had strong collaboration with Ministry of Education- Istanbul City Directorate. We used this link to invite students from various schools from kindergarten to high school level to the event, who are 10000 in Istanbul. 5000 people participated in workshops, 2000 people attended to seminars, concerts, dance and theatre shows, 4000 people actively involved in activities, games, competitions. Totally 7200 students participated to our Project.
Gauthier GROUSSET who is from European Commission visited us. He observed all events, after that we did a meeting about project. We discussed what can be done about the project to get better.
For the project, we contacted with many universities and acknowledged many researchers and teachers at national level. 2 Researchers and 10 teachers from Ankara, 1 researcher from Edirne, 1 researcher and 5 teacher from İzmit, 1 researcher from İzmir and 1 researcher from Urfa participated to the night. These researchers and teachers expressed their willingness for meeting with public by means of several activities such as seminars, science workshops, hands-on experiments, roundtables, and demonstrations.
We announced the event on the web-sites of these projects in order to reach as many people as possible. We disseminated the project results through project web-site, blogs, social networks, and university web-site. In addition, we took video-records of the good practices and type of activities most effective towards the achievement of the objectives to share.
Moreover, we invited national TV(ATV-Kanal D-CNN Turk-TRT) and radio channels to the activity venue. So, they made live program from the project location. In press, the impact of the project announced to the public by means of newspapers and magazines.
At last, we kept the project facebook account and web-site active even after the event, so the visitors can share their feelings and opinions about the event whenever they like, see their photos, and videos.
We worked again with non-governmental organizations, such as Educational Volunteers Foundation of Turkey (TEGV), The Foundation for Children with Leukemia (LÖSEV), TEMA, and Dusler Akademisi Foundation. Our team members worked hardly to communicate with them and encourage their participation in order to be examples of researchers who are acting responsibly and voluntarily for the public welfare. Our endeavour became known in a short time, and many other researchers, who are working for handicapped people and disabled students voluntarily contacted with our team to contribute to the project.
