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Target Groups

14.10.2022 12:33

SOSPOL (Social Policies Application and Research Center) is an application and research center established within the body of Muş Alparslan University and carries out activities to improve the lives of groups that are considered disadvantaged, marginalized, and at risk in social life. In this sense, the working groups of the organization consist of children, youth, women, the disabled, the elderly, the poor, and asylum seekers.

The expression of the disadvantaged group includes individuals whose field of action is restricted or who are trying to survive in adverse conditions in social life. Therefore, after supporting these groups with the highest risk of stigma, marginalization, and social exclusion, it is important to improve their social lives in order to ensure social balance. Within the framework of the social state understanding, various non-governmental organizations, institutions, and local organizations, especially the state, carry out activities to support disadvantaged groups. SOSPOL, which has adopted the mission of supporting vulnerable groups, aims to eliminate grievances by reducing social problems.

Although disadvantaged groups are united on common ground with their vulnerable social positions, each group has its own social problems. For example, children constitute one of the most vulnerable groups in this group. It is important for the future of society as a whole to solve various problems such as working children on the street, depriving them of their education rights, and child marriages. 

The elderly, who are another vulnerable group, experience care problems as a result of various diseases (physical, mental and spiritual, etc.) that arise due to the progression of age and are exposed to social isolation. In this sense, it is important to carry out practices such as rehabilitation and home care for the elderly and to facilitate the access of the elderly to health services in order to produce solutions to the problems they need.

The scope of disadvantaged youth consists of young people who face problems such as substance abuse, various types of abuse, unemployment, and poverty after unemployment. Therefore, all kinds of support to improve the economic, social, and psychological lives of young people are within the scope of SOSPOL's field of work.

One of the prominent social problems in SOSPOL's geographical location is poverty. According to the results of TURKSTAT, Income and Living Conditions Survey 2021, the region with the lowest income in Turkey is the TRB2 (Van, Muş, Bitlis, Hakkari) region, which also includes Muş (TÜİK, 2021). Poverty does not only contain the economy, but also brings with it the deprivation of basic life rights and necessities such as education, health, food, and cleaning. Therefore, it is important that poverty does not become a chronic deprivation and that households benefit from fundamental rights and freedoms fairly in order to close the invisible gaps in social life. 

Disabled people, another group that provides limited access to social institutions and basic needs, also face problems such as social exclusion and stigmatization. In addition to all these, disabled people with a wide network of problems, from macro problems such as employment to micro problems such as the negativity of actions against them in society, also get their share of social isolation. In this respect, it is extremely important for the disabled to participate in social life, to provide them with the skills to cope with the problems they encounter in daily life through psychological rehabilitation programs and to raise awareness for individuals who do not have a disability, in order to increase the quality of life of the disabled.

Women, who are in a disadvantageous position in many social areas from education to politics, from the labor market to the units of daily life in terms of gender discrimination, are still involved in informal jobs at many points of their working life, they are not included in the public sphere and are limited to the private sphere. Taking a clear stance against the exploitation of women's labor, SOSPOL carries out various activities to strengthen women's current position and participation in democratic life.

Finally, refugees, who are on the agenda of world politics, represent another disadvantaged group who were forced to leave their places under extraordinary circumstances such as war and disaster. Therefore, refugees, who are exposed to ethnic discrimination as a result of forced migration, are one of the groups most exposed to marginalization along with communication and language problems. In this sense, the first goal of our practices is to ensure their adaptation to the regions they migrate to. In summary, the negative life conditions experienced by disadvantaged groups are not an individual but a social problem.

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