KUTipical, Koç University (KU), Turkey

 

PROJECT TITLE:	KUTipical
STAKEHOLDERS:	Office of International Programs (OIP), International Community Office, Registrar’s Office, Dean of Students
TARGET AUDIENCE	University Students, specifically international full-time students and exchange students
PROJECT PERIOD:	Summer 2019 – Spring 2020
OBJECTIVE:	Determining the needs of the international students in Koc University and creating unique and entertaining solutions designed to foster their social inclusion.
ACTIVITY CALENDAR:
Late July and Early August	Talking to international students, Talking to a Professor in Communication from another university, Creating Qualtrics survey to determine the needs
Mid-August	Consulting with OIP for the feedback of the exchange-international students, prioritizing the needs, creating the feasible solutions based on the prioritized needs
12-16 August	Searching for technical support for film-making
19-22 August	Finding the first 5 video tips and writing the scripts
19-22 August	Determining the video specifications such as length, camera type and music
26-30 August	Finding entertaining ideas to combine solutions with the videos
9-13 September	Pilot film-shooting
9-13 September	Pilot film-editing
Late September	Publishing the first outputs
Regularly Every Week	Publishing one video and two informational posts
PROJECT OUTPUTS:	–          12 videos created   –          KUTipical Instagram account created   –          6 informational posts are created   –          5 volunteering students involved in creating videos
DISSEMINATION CHANNELS:	Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/kutipical/ ), Newsletter of KU’s Office of International Programs Facebook group of Koc University students.

Aiming to raise awareness on hostility towards migrants and foster social inclusion of native and international people of Koç University, KU Peace Envoys made a project plan to achieve this objective via developing an entertaining, interactive and creative tool that includes shortcuts on how to make life a bit easier for international students on the campus, and hence fosters their social inclusion. In order to first determine the needs of the international students studying at Koç University, they started off by asking the students, by conducting an online survey, about the struggles they have faced since their arrival in the university.

Once the difficulties faced by international students the most were determined, the Peace Envoys shot short guiding videos to overcome those difficulties and shared them on the social media platform “Instagram” in an account specifically created for this purpose and named “KUTipical”. In this Instagram account, they share videos giving tips to the international community at Koç University to help foster their inclusion in the campus life, as well as small charts containing useful information. KUTipical is also planned to be added as a tool in the KU’s Office of International Programs’ orientation pack for international newcomers.

Besides the Instagram project, the KU Peace Envoys also organized a “Human Library” event during one of the boot camps of the Peacemakers project in Istanbul. “Human Library” aims to enable people to meet, listen to each other, and overcome their fears and/or prejudices.  It is very similar to the experience of going to a library to borrow and read books. Individuals could be metaphorically seen as human “books” which the participants in the event can ‘read’ — raising a conversation with the volunteering “book” (storyteller) while encouraging the occurrence of a dialogue about that specific individual’s unique and eye-opening experiences. In their particular event, the Peace Envoys brought together ten migrant students volunteering to be “human books” and share their experiences of social exclusion from the society with the university community. The main purpose was to provide a platform for open discussion, bring about love, empathy, and diminish the dehumanization of migrants by seeing them as real people rather than just numbers and statistics.