Together, life is beautiful! The beraberce Association was established in November 2017. However, the groundwork for its ideas and practices stretches back to 2015. In 2015-2016, the beraberce Association’s team carried out a project, titled “Acting Together,” in partnership with DVV International (the Institute for International Cooperation of the German Adult Education Association), and continues to act as the strategic partner of DVV International in Turkey today. The Acting Together project brought together 10 youth and 1 writer each from Turkey and Armenia and aimed to contribute to the Turkish and Armenian people’s processes of facing one another, making peace and speaking and sharing with each other. It tried to achieve this through applying various methods, such as oral history, art and writing. In 2017, the oral history work and observations of the project’s participants were collected within a journal bearing the name of the project, Acting Together. Alongside this project, the team also conducted work on the topics of adult education, remembrance and practices of facing history. Adopting the slogan “Together, life is beautiful” and concerned with how to build a future of living together in peace on these lands, this team and its new friends and members, established the beraberce Association in November 2017. The beraberce Associations’ goal is to ensure equal opportunity in the processes of lifelong learning and to strengthen the processes of developing active and participatory citizenship. It defends the concept of a diverse society in order to achieve social cohesion and cares about developing the methods of living together. In accordance with this goal, the beraberce Association aims to develop practices of facing history though a responsible understanding of history; to ensure that sites of memory are formed by and together with the societies that remember; and to develop learning processes through remembering the past. In line with these goals and aims, the beraberce Association determines the needs, expectations and hopes of all factions of society with the members of the society themselves. In accordance with these needs, expectations and hopes, the beraberce Association develops rights-based projects and ensures they are collaborative through meeting with local governance and public institutions and civil society organizations. The beraberce Association considers the development and implementation of migration policies important. Instead of utilizing labels such as migrant and refugee, it prefers a holistic characterization of ‘migration issues’ and envisions the development of a comprehensive social policy in regards to migration. It supports and encourages efforts of developing locally-based project implementation models in order advance a permanent and comprehensive migration policy in Turkey and the region, in which the situation of forced displacement is becoming increasingly permanent. The beraberce Association values the practice of living our lives today through learning from our memories and its contribution to the processes of social cohesion. Instead of top-down methods of facing the past, it seeks to strengthen potential local experiences and support local manifestation and practices of facing the past. The beraberce Association envisions the creation of holistic local perspectives within work relating to memory and remembrance. Thereby, civil society will not utilize approaches developed by itself, but instead support the forming of local and regional practices of remembering. The beraberce Association seeks to develop methods of revealing local voices and perspectives within localized efforts focused on memory and remembrance. Instead of focusing on specific thematic headlines of memory and remembrance efforts, the beraberce Association develops and implements methods that bring forth collective narratives of memory. Within this framework, it undertakes the task of remembering the past through a holistic approach. Therefore, the beraberce Association finds it crucial to incorporate the region’s history and lively diversity when designing efforts relating to memory and remembrance. The beraberce Association deems the socialization of memory and remembrance work to be important. As such, it approaches the past together with the different segments of society.
