Duygu Kaban

I guess, it was always meant to be: me working in an international team. When I was going to the German high school in Turkey, I was changing dimensions daily basis. From a suburbia of Istanbul to the city center with 2 hours of travel and from city center to the German school system. I was scared and excited at the same time to talk in different languages, learn different perspectives and open up for excitements. Each day the travel to different dimensions, times and cultures since my adolescence times made me aware that I will be just so happy in an international group.

One way or another, I was involved to some of the programs at MitOst over 4 years. My path started with MitOst as a participant of Tandem Turkey programme round III, which I attended with our urban collective called Spacedigger. We have found Spacedigger in Shanghai as a student collective. Tandem Program gave us a great push to dig into different partnership and funding opportunities. With my tandem partnership, I have got familiar to the difficulties on Turkish academia. Later, I have started as an intern at Actors of Urban Change programme, where I later focused on the documentation of the last round for around 1,5 years. We have together developed the process diagram to create a visual comparable data of participant projects. The both programme gave me the inspiration and the motivation to work in academia on urban issues. So, I have started teaching a seminar called Urban Activism in Berlin at Humboldt University of Berlin.

Now, I am full time on board as project assistant for Tandem Turkey and Tandem Ukraine. I am very grateful to be back home, where I started my MitOst path. I am very excited to gain more regional insides of Ukraine, supporting culture in Turkey in this difficult times and sitting at the next door to Actors of Urban Change.

What made me stay in the Tandem family is the process oriented thinking not to the result. During this path, I am very excited about supporting the others not only where I live but beyond the borders, where this support definitely needed in some geographies. I am not just grateful but also very keen to have the responsibility to look at the bright side in difficult times. I am hoping this support can be carried out also in the future.