Our Projects
First Chance – İlk Fırsat
In 2019, Bilim Kahramanları Derneği became a NGO partner of the First Chance Program which focuses on enhancing the new university graduates’ employment process.
As part of the First Chance program, NGOs operating in Turkey are invited to apply to employ new university graduates in full time positions for 12 months :within their NGOs. Esas Social covers all costs related to their employment by making a grant to the NGO. More details can be found on this web site. www.ilkfirsat.org
Girls Meet with Science – Phase 2
Our Girls Meet with Science project is in its second year with the support from the Children’s Fund within the Support for Civil Society Foundation. With the second phase of “Girls Meet with Science” project, which we continued with the support from “Destekle Değiştir” (Giving Circle) event in the 2019-2020 season, we have been providing science, technology, mathematics and engineering skills (STEM) to children aged 6-10, creating awareness in coding, project development and teamwork. Within the scope of FIRST LEGO League Jr. program, we aim to support 20 teams of girls from different cities. With this project, we have the opportunity to establish teams consisting of only girls from public schools that cannot participate in such STEM projects with their own means. In this way, we are trying to create equal opportunities for public schools while also encouraging girls to participate in scientific activities.
Teams of the BOOMTOWN BUILD season, continue their work from 16 different cities which are: Adana, Antalya, Balıkesir, Batman, Denizli, Diyarbakır, Edirne, Hatay, İstanbul, İzmir, Kars, Kocaeli, Kütahya, Manisa, Mersin, Samsun.
Merak Makinesi (Curiosity Machine)
Merak Makinesi project of the Bilim Kahramanları Derneği is carried out with the support of Boeing. This project aims to increase children’s interest in science and engineering by stimulating their creativity and improving their problem-solving skills.
The project has been put into practice in January 2016 and has been aiming and accomplishing to draw the attention of children to aviation through various activities being performed in public schools. The children use simple recyclable materials for putting forth modules that are designs of aviation. Meanwhile, they comprehend in detail how their design will operate and how will it be beneficial in aviation.
The project is applied in public schools with the voluntary support of people who are mostly university students. The children go through a 5-week design-related course. Completed designs are presented to adults at the family-children festival after completing these courses.
The program starts with a 2-day face-to-face training for volunteers of the project. Afterwards, these project volunteers meet with children of the designated schools for 3 hours a week for five weeks to provide guidance and counselling for them while participants materialize their designs.
Virtual Science Festivals
Virtual Science Festivals are online STEM activities organized for FIRST LEGO League Explore teams in a virtual platform between June 9th and 25 th, 2020.
The Project aims to carry out activities with teams that have started their work as part of the 2019-2020 BOOMTOWN BUILD season but have to take a break from schools due to the transition to the remote education process. With Virtual Science Festivals, children are provided to think about buildings in cities, realize solutions that engineers find for the problems encountered, and share their own solutions with other participants. The festival, which includes debates on accesible buildings, environmentally friendly buildings and durable buildings, has also been a fun activity about building solid towers with basic materials. On 5-6 June, with the participation of 76 volunteers, 2 virtual volunteer trainings were carried out. With the support of our 59 volunteers at the Virtual Science Festivals, we reached 199 team coaches and 659 participants from 29 different cities and 114 different institutions.
You can visit our dijital exhibit in order to discover activities accomplished with teams: Dijital Sergi
FIRST ® LEGO® League Open International Turkey 2019- Izmir 22-25 May 2019
In the 15th year of FIRST LEGO League program in Turkey, we hosted one of the international tournaments of INTO ORBIT season with the cooperation of Fuar Izmir and Izmir Metropolitan Municipality.
With FIRST LEGO League Open International Turkey 2019 held at Fuar İzmir between 22-25 May; we hosted 82 teams from 40 countries. Children and young people from all over the world had the chance to meet each other, they shared their projects on the challenge of INTO ORBIT. They spent four days celebrating their scientific work and having fun.
For details of the international tournament: FIRST LEGO League Open International Turkey
Allianz Soma’da (Allianz in Soma)
Within the scope of the Allianz SomaDA project, Allianz Turkey has ensured the participation of 16 schools in 6 districts affected by a traumatic event in the region at the Science Heroes Meet Tournament to contribute to their psychosocial and personal development. With this project, 17 different Allianz SomaDA teams consisting of 34 volunteer teachers and 150 students were prepared for the tournament for four months.
Semi-structured interview forms prepared by expert psychologists and academicians were applied to the students who participated in the tournament in order to determine the effects of the tournament preparation and participation processes on the students in Soma. The data obtained by the descriptive analysis method were reported by the Bilim Kahramanları Derneği.
In the report prepared within the framework of these interviews, it was determined that scientific and technological studies contributed positively to reduce the traumatic effects of the mine accident. It was recorded that the tournaments they experienced for the first time in their lives contributed to the return of students to their normal lives as students felt valued during the process, gained confidence, enjoyed themselves, became happier, determined and hopeful.
It has been demonstrated in the report that the activities such as programming, robotics design, and preparation for making a presentation in front of a jury had enhanced the consciousness of team spirit, their success in science and mathematics courses at the school, and their interest for choosing professions in basic sciences and engineering. It has been found that this project has helped students discover their own skills and learn how to deal with problems as well as strengthening their skills of self-expression, healthy socialization and effective communication. It has also been found out that this project enabled students to realize that learning, discovering and sharing during the course of the tournament is more valuable than winning an award in the tournament.
Science Heroes Meet in Gemlik
The project, ‘Science Heroes Meet in Gemlik’ was planned in the year 2014 with the support of Borusan Holding. The goal of the project was to inspire 100 children in the Gemlik district of Bursa for science and to familiarize them with the associated career opportunities.
As part of this project, ten teams from the public schools of Gemlik visited the FIRST LEGO League local tournament in Bursa in 2015. Teams that participated in robotics workshops and completed the project phase participated in the 2015-2016 season’s “FIRST LEGO League Trash Trek” challenge.
Science Camp with Hugo Boss
Bilim Kahramanları Derneği, with the support of Hugo Boss, has developed a five-day science camp for the children of Hugo Boss employees. This five-day camp aimed to enable children and teens to develop their robotics, designing, and coding skills and increase their awareness in this field.
These children and teens learned and improved their skills to design and program robots for one week. They developed robotics models for the Hugo Boss textile factory. These models could count, carry and distinguish fabrics according to their colours. After a one week workshop, the children had a fun activity involving their teaching of software coding for their design to their parents.
Children and teens who have learned to design and program the robots for a week have developed robot models for the Hugo Boss factory that could count, carry and differentiate the fabrics according to their colours. At the end of a week, the kids had a great time while teaching their parents how they should write programs for their projects.
Girls Meet with Science
Girls Meet with Science project was launched by the Children’s Fund within the Support for Civil Society Foundation, with the support from the Turkish Mosaic Foundation. With the “Girls Meet with Science” project that started in February 2018, we tried to provide children between the ages of 6-10 with the opportunity to gain science, technology, mathematics and engineering skills (STEM), to raise awareness in coding, to gain experience in areas such as project development, teamwork, and presentation. Within the scope of our program we aimed to support 12 teams of girls from different cities for the FIRST LEGO League Jr. With this project, we had the opportunity to establish teams consisting of girls from public schools that could not participate in such STEM projects with their own means. In this way, we created an equal opportunity for public schools while also encouraging girls to participate in scientific activities.
With this project, we reached 72 girls from 8 different cities: Denizli, Diyarbakır, Edirne, Hatay, İstanbul, İzmir, Mersin ve Samsun.
Development and Implementation Project of Science Heroes Association Representation Model
Within the scope of the Sivil Düşün Programme’s Organization Support which is carried out by European Union Delegation of Turkey, we implemented the project of developing and implementing the representative model.
With the intend of spreading scientific work, connecting the youth with science and supporting scientists across different provinces of Turkey we held a local organization meeting. In it we discussed methods of cooperation and our expansion strategy and we also exchanged ideas for our representative model. We thank Sivil Düşün for the meeting we held with our 7 members from 5 provinces.
