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About STGM

Civil Society Development Center (Sivil Toplum Geliştirme Merkezi Derneği - STGM) was founded in the year 2004 by a group of opinion leaders and activists who believed in the importance of civil society for the development of participatory democracy in our country.

The fundamental purpose of STGM is supporting civil society organizations, which are the voices of citizens and essential actors of democracy, towards being strengthened and capable of realising more effective actions. Therefore, although providing assistance to all structures within civil society, STGM gives priority to the organizations that employ rights-based approach. The priority target group of STGM comprises of the civil society organizations that deal in the fields of gender, children, human rights, youth, environment, handicapped rights and cultural rights/culture-arts. 

Capacity building supports come at the top of the study areas dealt with by STGM. These capacity-building studies take on forms that align with the needs that change in time from common training programmes to the provision of legal assistance to organizations, and from institutional guidance studies to empowering civil networks and cooperation.  Policy advocacy is yet another study area which is on the agenda both in the context of the own freedom of organizing for STGM and in the context where STGM develops programmes for empowering other organizations. Our communication studies, through which we have tried out many firsts in civil society during the last 20 years, aim for increasing the visibility of civil society organizations as well as aiming to publicize the efforts of STGM. 

STGM has been conducting its studies mainly though projects within the scope of instrument for pre-accession financial cooperation and civil society supported by the European Union since the year 2004.

On the other hand, STGM carries out closely cooperated actions with public institutions that have civil society-related duties, primarily the Ministry of Foreign Affairs EU Department and STİGM.