Animal Rights, Speciesism Workshops for Children Begin

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The work of “Animal Rights and Speciesism Workshops” actualized by the Protecting and Improving Animal Rights (HAGİD) with the support of the Third Sector Foundation of Turkey (TÜSEV) started at the Bilgi University yesterday (June 12).

In the work in which psychologists, teachers, child development experts, attorneys, academics, child rights and animal rights activists come together, topics have been handled such as the similarities between child rights and animal rights, common issues coming up in right struggles, and that different methods have been discussed in order to raise awareness in children that animals are not properties and they have rights like individuals.

With this work, it is planned to develop a workshop model for children as to animal rights and speciesism and share it as open source in the end of September.

“Pioneer in Turkey”

HAGİD Executive Board Member, Burak Özgüner emphasizing that the work is pioneer in Turkey, spoke as follows:

“We see by looking at the past in Turkey the awareness works carried out have been restricted to concepts of love, compassion, mercy. As much as we know how important love is, our intention is not merely to plant animal love in children but manage to make them question speciesism, which is a form of discrimination.

The “Animal Rights and Speciesism Workshops for Children” carried out by the vegan animal rights activists, is being planned to be actualized with the children from five socio-culturally different pilot areas. The work aims to contribute to children to develop more just and equal relations with animals in opposition to human oriented perspective in people. (ÇT/TK)