This Week's Changemaker; Zeynep Şimşek Improves Conditions of Migrant Farm Workers

On 4 October 2009 Sabancı Foundation's "Turkey's Changemakers" program hosts Prof. Dr. Zeynep Şimşek, the founding director of the Harran University Medical School Public Health Department. Together with her colleague Dr. İbrahim Koruk, Zeynep Şimşek dedicates her work to improving the health conditions of migrant farmworkers which comprise almost 20% of the population in the Southeastern province of Şanlıurfa (also known in short as 'Urfa').

Since 2001, her projects have included providing mobile health services and public health education programs for young people and village headmen (local government representatives in villages and neighborhoods where migrant farmworkers live), and projects to address the Malaria epidemic. Through her work, she has enabled health care support and access for over 225.000 migrant farmworkers and their families.

In 2009 she and her colleagues established the Migrant Farm Workers Human Rights Association (www.metider.org.tr) to develop and manage programs that promote the rights and well being of this disadvantaged community.

For more information: www.metider.org.tr