 My name is Vanina Marsen and I'm a digital agriculture analyst at Fauré and today's host and our special guest today is Çatay Cebi. He is the project coordinator with FAUTURKYE. Welcome Çatay. And Çatay, today we invited you to tell us how HEP YERİN then, which you might have seen a little bit of in the previous video, has acted as a revolutionary tool as an online marketplace for women's cooperatives in Turkey. As usual, we will have four questions for you to get started and then we'll turn to the audience. So colleagues, you can start writing down your questions or comments in the chat and raise your hand if you want to ask anything at the end. My co-host Veronica Şarova, also a digital agricultural analyst here at Reu, will be helping me with the questions in the chat later. So I'll go ahead and get started with the first question. I think it's something that everyone would like to know. What is the origin story of HEP YERİN then? What inspired the development of this e-marketplace? And can you tell us a little bit more about the project specifically, the process of establishing such an online platform? Thank you Vanina and thank you for inviting me and having me here. Women play a critical role in rural development, particularly in cooperatives where the communities get together, work together and live together. We are also aware of the persisting inequities between men and women and how women suffer from lack of fair compensation. And if you don't close the gender gap in agri-food systems, all of our efforts for sustainable systems and rural development will be in vain or incomplete. And HEP YERİN then is a step, perhaps the biggest one that we have taken to fill that gap so far. And it's a step within our cooperative support program that started in 2019 with a small project that we implemented with the Minister of Agriculture and Forestry of Turkey. And then we continued with a larger EU funded project that has an aim of socio-economic integration of Syrian refugees to the host communities. So, using trainings plus equipment support, marketing and digital support led to the creation of an online marketplace operating nationwide. We encouraged the Women Let Go parties that we have supported to get together, join their forces to become stronger, get recognized and create a joint identity that can represent the women of agriculture to the whole nation. Currently we have 10 women-led cooperatives selling more than 40 different types of products in HEP YERİN than that co-op, the e-market place. That not only allow the cooperatives to sell their products directly from its source to the consumer, which by the way is the meaning of HEP YERİN than in Turkish, it means always from the source. So the HEP YERİN also brings those cooperatives together and act as a gathering place. The project that I mentioned is still ongoing and expanding with other cooperatives. Here I can show you the website. Let me quickly share my screen. You see it right? As you can see, this is your usual e-commerce site. This is the main entrance site of the HEP YERİN than that co-op. We deliberately choose the extension name co-op instead of the others because we want to emphasize this is a platform operated and established by cooperatives. So we have the marketplace here where the consumers buy the products directly from the member cooperatives. So we have also other sections such as about us where we talk about the stories of the cooperatives, stories of HEP YERİN than. We have some notes, we have some media relations, and this is the basket and this is your account in the PLA. Thank you so much for showing us a bit about the platform and everyone can definitely visit it later. We will share some of the links as well related to that. So I'm curious, you spoke to the fact that HEP YERİN then was originated to sort of fill a gap that existed for rural women farmers and these rural women led cooperatives. Could you elaborate a bit more on your approaches when working with these rural women farmers in Turkey? And do you have any lessons learned to share with us? Yes, we do. Working with rural women is sometimes difficult but a very rewarding experience. Their energy, their positivity, lift your spirit up and encourages you to continue your efforts, continue working for them. And you can see how eager they are always to learn new things. And we have some approaches that we have taken that we have been taking and we continue to take. We have been implementing also farmer field schools under the same project and many of these cooperative members have also attended our farmer field school under the same project. We believe farmer field schools, the FFS, is the best farmer extension modality to transfer knowledge and new technologies to the farmers. The FFS is inherently aligned with the cooperative spirit. It is based on part-spiritual learning where like-minded farmers get together and gain new skills by doing it themselves directly in their fields. It also shows farmers the benefits of working and living together. So FFS fit right in and complimented the cooperative trainings that we provided to the rural women. The women who completed the technical farmer field school trainings further received basic and advanced business development and entrepreneurship training such as decision-making, organizational structures, e-commerce, marketing, financial management and statistical thinking. We also developed a website for FFS Action in Turkey where the users can access the training modules. They can share their experience with the other members of the site as well as they can receive real-time weather and production information directly from their fields using the satellite imagery. At the end, all these individual cooperatives are equipped with this knowledge and they bring their unique experience and skills to the umbrella platform. They cooperate with other cooperatives to create this unique brand. Thanks Jetta. It's always very inspiring and great to hear that even though this is a women's lead initiative and these are women-led cooperatives, we have men that are also working with these women and are very enthusiastic to work with them. But you also mentioned that it has not always been very straightforward working on this marketplace. So I was wondering if you could share a bit more about the challenges you face while working with these approaches and maybe any success stories that you also have. Yes, of course as I said earlier, although it is rewarding, but it is sometimes also difficult and challenging. And the main challenge that we face is that the rural women, they are not used to taking decisions and leading a business. For all of their lives, someone else, their husband and fathers in most cases took the decisions and let the businesses and again in most cases let their families for them. So even though the women did most of the work in the field and in the house, they did not have any experience on decision making or leading a business. They are willing but it's a complete new territory for them. So it needed a lot of encouragement to overcome this. We wanted to ensure that they become aware of their unique and strong capacities. We wanted to build confidence. So we use semi-structured training methods to inspire coverage and self-confidence. We also show them role models, other successful women and rural women most of the time as examples so that they can see the successful women and get coverage. For example, one of the role models that we have shown the other co-operatives is actually a member of this Hapier-Ildam platform, head of one of the co-operatives, Miskur Sel Appa from Truncelar. I met her two years ago in her village. It's a small rural town in Western Anatolia, a beautiful town by the way, and then the village and her co-operatives surrounded by these nice tangerine orchards. It's always looking beautiful. She, Gür Sel Appa, when I met her first, she was just starting this co-operative. She was trying to gather all the other women and people, the villagers into the co-operatives. She was trying to produce a unique item that they can sell, that they can market to the local area. So we have supported her and her co-operative. We provided them technical trainings. We provided them some equipments that are necessary as a start-up equipments. And then she quickly expanded their businesses. They now produce this geographically identified tangerines. They further processed those tangerines to produce other products, and they sell those products not only to the local area, but to the whole country. And she actually become a FAO food hero, and her story is actually also published on FAO's website, her food hero story. So it was a success story that we have shown our other co-operatives and other beneficiaries. I must also talk about the technical challenges that we have faced here, I believe, because not just working with others, we also had some technical challenges, IT related challenges, structural issues, as well as some other issues related to the marketing. That's very interesting. I encourage you all to read Grisel's story. I have, and it's quite inspiring, and it's something that I think has inspired a lot of the other women as well. So we're also now getting to the end of the talk, actually, with my last question. And I realize that you mentioned that you've had some technical challenges as well. Could you tell us some more, I guess, more so of what are the technical aspects that it takes to set up and run an e-marketplace such as this? How are you working to resolve these technical challenges, and what are the future plans for the platform itself? Thank you, Wenina. As I said, we had faced some challenges, and we also have some plans, obviously, to overcome these challenges. We have now Ismet Yalcinbe with us here, and he's the main coordinator of our Women Let Go program. So I think he is in a much better position to answer that question. So if you allow us, I will ask Ismet to respond to this question. Welcome Ismet. Yes, we'd love to hear more from you. Hi. Thank you, Chaatai and Wenina. Actually, do you hear me? Actually, we set up a digital marketing platform from payments to logistics because digital marketing platform is difficult to maintain. And we agreed, we had an agreement with one of the famous payment systems also because the security is important. And when a customer wants to buy a product where Chaatai showed in our website, he or she can click on the button, buy button. Then the payment system takes control of the system and like in other commercial sites. Then after acceptance of the payment procedure, an email goes to our cooperatives and our cooperatives prepare their product. And they call the Logistic Operator. We have also a special agreement with the government of PTT Cargo because they give special discounts to our Women Let Go cooperatives. And also Women Let Go cooperatives are some of them are in rural areas in each part of Turkey. It is not easy to find the Logistic Operator there or it can be costly. Then, like any other famous digital platform, they took their product and they sent to the customer. After customer receives their product, our cooperatives receives their money in every two weeks. It is a normal procedure. But I have to mention for the sales because sales are not desired in desired level since we established new this platform. Market is very competitive and we need to work for marketing and it is very costly operation. Our plan is to extend all over the Turkey. For this reason to improve ourselves, we are in connection with the major e-commerce sites in Turkey, Amazon-like platforms. And with these type of partnerships, it will help our cooperatives to maintain their digital operation because it is not easy to use and maintain for Women Let Go cooperatives. Since they are mostly living in the rural areas. And as Chad I mentioned, they know production. They are maybe in housewives in their homes, but also they are trying to produce something and trying to sell it. For this reason, digital part is important. For this reason, we want to establish this connection between the famous digital commerce sites in Turkey and it will help our sustainability. And this is important because companies, such big companies are taking this for their social responsibility. For this reason, we are planning to pass our selling part to integrate actually with the Pazarama or another famous digital marketing platform. Our plan is also to maintain the Appierenden platform as a digital hub because it is a crucial digital system. And it is not only for marketplace, but also it is for training and any other sources of women cooperatives and for farmers such as traceability, quality of products, etc. We know it is a difficult thing, but this is the just beginning. But we have confidence to our Women Let Go cooperatives to succeed and we believe that we will succeed all together. Thank you very much for listening to me. If you ask any question, I'll try to answer. Thanks. Thank you so much, Ismet. And thank you also to Chatai for all of these great insights that you've shared. So I think now is the time for us to turn to the audience for questions. So colleagues, I see some of you already have your hands raised. Some might have. Chatai, did you want to say something? Just one thing to compliment what Ismet Bey explained about the marketing. We knew at the very beginning that the market is quite competitive and it would be difficult to compete against the national e-commerce giants. Because they are giants, they hold the market strongly and they are not willing to, of course, let it go. So instead of competing against them, as Ismet Bey explained, we are trying to integrate into them. So instead of competing, we are working together with them. So since this is an economical and the social movement, we have seen that they are really open to cooperate with such a Women Let Initiate. We just wanted to add that. Thanks. Thank you so much. Yes. I think that's important to include that as a result of social responsibility, they are aiming to integrate. So I think we'll move on now to see if the audience had further questions. As I said, I've seen that there's some raised hands and some questions in the chat. So I'll just hand it over to Veronica to help me pick a few questions. Thanks. Thanks, Vanina. Good afternoon, colleagues. So the question that we have in the chat is, first of all, a colleague named Li is asking which provinces has the project been implemented? So you want to cover? Okay, go ahead. Let me quickly respond. That's an easy one. The project covers 10 provinces of Turkey, some of them in the western part, but most of them are in the southeast and a few on the east. Namely, we have Izmir, Manisa, Bursa from the west. We have one, the promised one from the east. And then we have Shanlurfa, Gaziantep, Kahraman, Marash, Atay, Kilis, and I always forget one of them. DRB, no, not DRB, that's the Japanese project. And Adana. Thank you, Emre Bey. Yes. Thank you so much. And so on a similar topic, questions from the chat from our colleague Daniela is asking, is geographical distance an issue? For example, for matters such as storage or shipping, or does technology help tackling this divide too? Maybe would you like to take this one, or do you want me to? Yes, that's a very good question. It actually does help. I'll help them very much to tackle this issue. However, it is still an issue, geographical distance, because this is a marketplace operating nationwide. So your customers, and usually the customers are from the major, major provinces such as Istanbul or Ankara or Izmir. And our cooperatives are located somewhat distant provinces to these locations. However, luckily, the shipment system in Turkey is quite developed, it's quite well developed, although sometimes very costly. To overcome that, we have facilitated some discussions with some companies. For example, we have this semi-government owned company called PTT Bank and PTT Shipping Services. So they made a very good deal with our cooperatives through our facilitations. And now the shipment is much better organized and less expensive. Very interesting. So now let's turn to the audience. We have a couple of raised hands. I would like to first give an opportunity to apologize if I pronounced it wrongly, Mevlut, to ask his question. And then Leone, please unmute yourself. You hear me? Yes, now we do. Okay, thank you very much. First of all, I would like to thank you for the presentations and opportunity. I have two questions. One goes to Çataybe and the other one goes to probably Smetve. The first question is relevant to women's initiative for this experience. How their reactions during the training period, because the women's attendance to training may have difficulties, more difficulties than men. So during training farmer schools, field schools, what was the reaction of the farmers and how they attended all the procedural training, accountancy training, etc. And the second one goes to İsmet Bey. How is it possible to increase the number of cooperatives in the Happy Erendan platform? Is it possible? Because 10 cooperatives may be not enough for the time being. In the future, do you have any plan to increase the number of co-op members? Thank you very much. Thank you Mehmet Bey and Merhaba. Mehmet Bey is from Turkey by the way. And very, very good questions. And that is something that we have been, I mean, involving women or increasing the women involvement in our project activities. That is something that we have been prepared for, even before the project starts, that we had plans for and that we had put special attention, special attention to ensure women participation in our project activities. Setting aside the women cooperative support program, we also had, as you said, and as I mentioned, we had farmer field schools, we have vocational trainings within the same project. And we had set high targets, gender targets for these activities. For vocational trainings, we targeted 50%, at least 50% women participation. And for farmer field schools, we targeted at least 30%. There is a reason behind that and I will try to quickly, very quickly explain. For vocational trainings, we took some extra measures. During the beneficiary selection, we have a good set criteria for beneficiary intake. And we have given extra scoring to the women candidates so that we could intake women participants for vocational trainings for farmer field schools. There is a cultural difficulty there. Especially in the rural area, although women are farmers, women do the farm job, but a large majority of the farmlands or the businesses are owned and registered by the name of the fathers or of the husbands. So it was quite difficult to find women farmers who had formal registration in their names. In the western part of Turkey, it was easier or still difficult, but in the eastern part we have seen that challenge a lot. But working meticulously with our implementing partners, we have somehow and somewhat managed to ensure the participation of women into our project activities. For women-led cooperative support program, we deliberately went to the field, looked for women-led initiatives and cooperatives that are in line with our selection criteria and we selected them as project beneficiaries. And I can, I mean, as I said earlier, they are women, especially the rural women are so eager to learn new things and I believe they are, they can, they adopt these new technologies better than men in most cases. I'm talking about rural men. Thank you. I hope that answers. Thank you. Thank you, Chati. Thank you very much, Mayuzbe for raising this question. Actually, we organized Hapyerinland.co with the 10 women-led cooperatives, but it is open to other cooperatives also. We have other projects which we are working with the women cooperatives. If they are sufficient enough to market their products, then we will integrate to the Hapyerinland.co. It means that it is an open platform for the ready cooperatives. Thank you. Just an add, a small add. What will be the criteria, main criteria for the cooperatives if you want to accept their applications? Sorry, Ismet Bey. Actually, well, the major criteria is the quality issues, the marketing issues. They have to obey the marketing rules. Then they can, they have to send their products to customers and they have to deal with all these procedures with the customers. Thank you. Thank you very much. I think we have missed two questions from Daniel or no, we haven't yet come to that point. We have another hand in the audience and then we can go to the questions in the chat, of course. So, Neza, please. Thank you very much. I couldn't understand, but I couldn't open my video. Anyway, thank you very much. I'm a gender specialist in FAO Turkey. I want to mention one important point. These women's cooperatives, besides the digital platforms and women's economic empowerment, it's very important for the community development. Because recently, you know, in Turkey in February, we had an earthquake and during these earthquakes, the FAO's program, cooperative program, supporting, you know, at least six cooperatives in the earthquake region. And, you know, these cooperatives also emergently supported their communities, you know, after the earthquakes. So I think gender transformative approaches are critical here. We should not only recognize that women have strong, women are the, you know, vulnerable group always because we are, you know, saying this and we should not only, you know, specify that women are vulnerable, but we should also recognize that women have strong capacity and knowledge that we should need to invest it. That is what we approach, let's say we initiated this cooperative program. Thank you very much. Neşanım, thank you. Thank you very much. Neşanım is FAO Turkey's gender specialist who's been with us since the very beginning and supported all of their activities strongly and thanks to our efforts we come this far. Thank you. Thank you Neşanım again. Thank you. Thank you everyone and thank you to everyone who asked questions. So I'm glad that you could turn on your camera now. So now that the time has basically come to a close, I wanted to thank everyone for the questions that you asked and all of the inside shares. And I wanted to thank everyone for joining today. So we will continue with any further questions in our radio digital teams channel and you can also feel free to reach out to us with any other questions that are email.