The Activities of Van Women’s Association (VAKAD) Women’s Counseling Center between 2004 –2009

Women in Eastern Turkey experience all types of violence and discrimination against women at the highest level, while they have very limited access to the services they need. Van Women’s Association (VAKAD) was founded in 2004 to struggle with discrimination and violence against women and organize various activities aiming to solve the problems in a feminist perspective. Women’s Counselling Center is a substantial activity area of the Association targeting empowerment of women, supporting their active participation to social life and solidarity with women in difficult situations. Through development of a computer assisted procedure initiated in 2008, all applications to the Center and the efforts in response to these applications were recorded to a database. This article evaluates the characteristics of the applications to the Women’s Counseling Center of VAKAD and the efforts in response to these applications between 2004 – 2009 through the analysis of the records in the database.