At the event organized for World Neighborhood Day, we met with local and asylum-seeking women and talked about their relationships with their neighbors and what the neighborhood has become today. Immigrant women participated in our event by inviting their neighbors. HEMDEM, a Women’s Cooperative has prepared the meals, and we have to chat about the neighborhood.
Most of the participants talked about the difficulties they experienced during the period of home closure in the pandemic. They talked about how much they needed their neighbors during this period, that the positive-negative attitudes at that time significantly affected their relationship. In addition, immigrant women shared the discrimination they saw from some of their neighbors. Solution suggestions were discussed on these shares. Local participants said that they had encountered similar problems from time to time with their own non-immigrant neighbors and that they thought that these problems were not unique to immigrants only.
During the meeting, the short film “Qahve” produced by the Refugees Association was watched. In the film, a boy who was sent to buy coffee at a grocery store cannot tell what he wants because he doesn’t speak Turkish. When he returns to the apartment, a neighbor advises him to ask for it with a cup. Finally, thanks to this help, coffee reaches the guests. Our second neighborly-themed movie was a commercial for a grocery store in Germany. Finally, the participants were talked about the feelings that these films left in them. They were asked to share if they had similar stories to the ones they were watching.
In our event, treats belonging to Syrian and Turkish cultures were prepared by the employees of HEMDEM Women’s Cooperative. Women asked for recipes, asking about the flavors they liked. The most delightful side of the meeting was that local participants tasted immigrant tastes and immigrant women tasted local tastes.