Child-Focused City

The exhibition Child-Focused City: A Search for Equality, prepared by the Research Support Community under Suna’nın Kızları and the Istanbul Research Institute, emphasizes the importance of data-driven development in urban policies and services for children, particularly in education.

The Research Support Community under Suna’nın Kızları launched the Child-Focused City platform, a geographic, dynamic, sustainable, and multi-layered digital tool born out of the need for data-driven decision-making to design effective services and interventions supporting children’s holistic development. The platform, at the center of the exhibition, includes maps and publications based on data sets that enable an analysis of how well services for children across Istanbul, particularly in the districts of Fatih and Sultanbeyli, align with neighborhood-scale needs.

Child-Focused City aims to bring together and present data on children produced by various institutions in a meaningful way, primarily to organizations, institutions, and initiatives that implement policies and practices for children, as well as to all citizens. The content development and physical design processes of the platform were supported by Suna’nın Kızları, the Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation (TESEV), and the Needs Map. The Education Reform Initiative (ERG) contributed by providing data on educational institutions and creating categories, while other organizations within the community provided regular feedback to support the process.

The digital platform presented as part of the Child-Focused City: A Search for Equality exhibition is complemented by photo narratives reflecting girls’ personal neighborhood experiences, photographs by Bekir Dindar observing children in urban spaces, and images from the Suna and İnan Kıraç Foundation Photography Collection.