In January 2023, FLA’s flagship project, Harvesting the Future in Türkiye, was expanded to cover the country’s rose sector for an initial two-year period, lasting through December 2024. The project seeks to improve human rights and labor conditions in Türkiye’s rose sector, focusing on empowering seasonal agricultural workers and their families in the supply chains of project partner companies.
The project brings together a range of stakeholders, including the Turkish government, civil society organizations, processors, producers, and beauty and fragrance companies, aiming to support and collaborate with companies as they advance human rights due diligence systems in their supply chains, and garner local stakeholder engagement.
Key areas of work include establishing robust governance, stakeholder engagement, and advocacy efforts; strengthening supply chain management systems of project partners; undertaking field-level interventions to improve working and living conditions; and ensuring access to remedy for the agricultural workers and their families.
In 2023, FLA assembled nearly 60 staff members from local grassroots organizations — including teachers, physiologists, social workers, and outreach staff — to carry out more than 150 training programs for rose oil processors, farmers, labor intermediaries, workers, and their families, as well as educational activities for the workers’ children.
These initiatives, which took place in eight villages in Isparta:
- Referred 735 children to public schools, child-friendly spaces, or childcare centers, and provided access to meals, clothing, educational activities, socio-cultural activities, psychosocial support services, school supplies, and transportation to the project-run summer camp.
- Trained 1,662 rose farmers on decent work, child protection, and occupational health and safety.
- Trained 1,667 seasonal migrant workers on decent work, child protection, occupational health and safety, and parental support.
- Trained 120 participants from rose oil processing companies on child protection, child labor case management protocol, and farm level monitoring.
- Trained 13 mothers and caregivers on early childhood development and childcare.
Project participants also:
- Renovated and furnished two school buildings in Tepecik and Saracık, which were used to provide education and extracurricular activities for the children of seasonal migrant agricultural workers.
- Constructed sanitation facilities in Ardıçlı and Saracık at campsites for harvest workers, including 30 bathrooms, 28 toilets, and four water fountains.
- Distributed 928 hygiene kits, 950 health and safety kits, 290 baby diapers bags, and 1,140 sanitary pads packages to seasonal migrant agriculture workers and their families.
To select the project beneficiaries, FLA conducted supply chain mapping with 19 local processors and a baseline study involving 429 farmers and 829 workers and their families in 326 households. Other project activities included monitoring 100 farms in the supply chains of project companies to ensure decent working conditions, and establishing a National Advisory Committee comprising the representatives from various ministries, United Nations agencies, and non-governmental organizations working in Türkiye.
In 2024, FLA plans to expand the project activities to reach three additional villages in Isparta.