Happy International Women's Day

We can’t stop at TPF.

At the end of January we rolled out a campaign focused on Empowering Turkish Girls. Wow, were we pleased to see how many of you wanted to help us educate, uplift, inspire and encourage young Turkish women to believe in and fulfill their potential.

Over 2,700 people participated in our Facebook contest that outlined three projects working to empower Turkish girls. They are projects run by Toplum Gonulluleri Vakfi, Hisar Anadolu Destek Dernegi and Cagdas Yasami Destekleme Dernegi. Tomorrow, we will announce the project that will win the TPF $10,000 grant. The announcement will be made during our town hall video chat at 1PM EST/8PM IST/10AM PST. Participants range from UN Women, Partners for a New Beginning, Egitim Reformu Girisimi to Turkish Women’s Initiative. Please join us.

But our excitement doesn’t stop there.

On the occasion of International Women’s Day, Turkish Philanthropy Funds (TPF) and Turkish Women’s International Network (TurkishWIN) are proud to announce a partnership that will support Turkish women and girls’ education in Turkey: the TPF-TurkishWIN Fund.

The TPF-TurkishWIN fund will allocate five percentage of TurkishWIN membership revenue annually to the TPF-run TurkishWIN Fund. What’s even better, is that we’ve made it possible for TurkishWIN members to contribute directly to the fund. TPF will match dollar-for-dollar, up to $2,300, contributions made by TurkishWIN members in the first year. Initial year grants will provide scholarship to college students from the city of Van through Cagdas Yasami Destekleme Dernegi (CYDD).

With news and activities like this – do you see why we can’t stop at TPF? And we couldn’t be more thrilled.

Warmly,

Team TPF

Making Gender History This Month

President Obama agrees, “While we have made great strides toward equality, we cannot rest until our mothers, sisters, and daughters assume their rightful place as full participants in a secure, prosperous, and just society.”

As we kick off Women’s History Month today, TPF is working hard to make sure that all women realize their potential and assume rightful place as full participants in society. For the past month we’ve focused on gender equality in our Twitter and Facebook campaigns. As we look to International Women’s Day next week we plan to focus our efforts to find concrete solutions that will close the Turkish gender gap.

One of those solutions is to support a project that empowers Turkish girls. Next Thursday, March 8 we will announce the winners from our Facebook contest that had three terrific Turkish NGOs competing for a $10,000 grant for their work to advance girls’ rights in Turkey. The announcement will be made during an hour-long “town hall” video chat with leading Turks and experts on women’s issues.

The conversation will be held from 1-2PM EST/8-9PM IST/10-11AM PST.

To join, RSVP to info@tpfund.org and click on this link: http://www.linqto.com/rooms/tphilanthropy.

Please test your camera and mic before you enter the chat room. If you have questions, please let us know.


Warm regards,

Team TPF

Corporate Philanthropy Day

Many corporations are celebrating Corporate Philanthropy Day today. Started by the Committee for Encouraging Corporate Philanthropy it is “intended to build awareness of corporate-community partnerships.” We at TPF believe that’s definitely worth celebrating – and the perfect way to close out our Empowering Turkish Girls campaign.

Corporate-community partnerships have been critical to TPF’s work, especially recently. Partnering with TurkCell, TPF has been working on a campaign, entitled, Yes She Can, to connect talented Turkish girls with experienced mentors in the United States. Our goal is to encourage and inspire more young Turkish women to pursue leadership positions in government, civil society and business. We’re kicking this project off later this spring and will provide more information then.

In the meantime, we’ve been leading up to Yes She Can with a month-long campaign on empowering Turkish girls. We’re in the final stretches of this campaign that has included a Twitter discussion and a contest that closes this Wednesday, February 29. Three Turkish non-profits are competing for a $10,000 grant for a project that supports young Turkish girls. Your participation will make a difference. Please vote.

And a heartfelt appreciation for all of TPF’s corporate partners – thank you for supporting us in our effort to positively impact Turkey through philanthropy:

American Express
Apple
Bechtel
Chevron
Goldman Sachs
JP Morgan Chase & Co
Hilton Hotels
Metlife
Microsoft
Qualcomm
UBS
Autobrennt LLC
Daniel, Mann, Johnson & Mendenhall
Electronic Arts
Great-West Retirement Services
Herrick, Feinstein LLP
IMPAQ
International Innovative Asset Resources, Inc.
MathWorks. Inc.
NB Ventures
NEX Worldwide Express
Project Mailbox
Prudential
AKDO
BK Restaurant Partners
Roshan Trading
Sharabi Inc.
SMC Management Corporation
The Marmara-Manhattan
Thomson Reuters Company

Thank you,

TPF Team

A Valentine from Van

By Servet Harunoğlu
Hisar Anadolu Destek Derneği

I was in Van for 3 days last week and returned back on Saturday. The situation in Van is worse than I expected. I did not realize that the problem was so large. Most of the buildings in the city are damaged and they are waiting for demolition. The people have either left Van or they are living in tents. The temperature was -6 degrees last week. The government has put up container villages, but the people prefer to live in make shift tents near their homes.

Make shift tents

The people had been through a trauma which will last sometime for them to get over. I think the good weather in the spring will raise their morale and they will start returning to their normal lives.

Enver Bey has setup office in one of the containers that we have sent and he is organizing the relief efforts. He has formed groups of four girls in each ghetto that we work. These girls locate the families that needs support, make a list of what they need and report to Enver Bey. Next day the help is sent to the families. The number of families that are receiving help from us has reached 350. All the people that I have met asked me to relay their thanks to all the good people that are helping them.

Helping a family of 7 whose tent was burned the day before.

We have started work in two of our workshops. The other three are damaged and the girls are reluctant to go in them. The girls in operating workshops are very happy to attend a workshop where they socialize in a warm environment, have decent lunch and make some money. We are trying to set up two prefabricated workshops instead of the ones that are damaged. We hope to have them up and running in March. The Governor of Van has congratulated us for organizing the operation of two workshops, and indicated that such success stories are necessary for uplifting of morale in the city.

In the Haci Bekir atelier

It is cold in Van.

We feel that we have and are helping these people and we could not have done this without the help of our friends.

On behalf of all the families and the girls in Van that we work with we wish to thank Turkish Philanthropy Funds for all they have done and hope that their support continues.

Fighting for Gender Equality: TPF’s Twitter Chat

By Elmira Bayrasli

Engaging men, focusing on childcare options and educating women were some of the suggestions made during our Twitter chat on empowering Turkish girls and closing Turkey’s gender gap. The chat kicked off Turkish Philanthropy Funds’s month-long campaign on empowering teen girls.

Istanbul-based journalist Claire Berlinski participated and, subsequently, had questions about the World Economic Forum’s Gender Gap report, released last week, that ranks Turkey 122 out of 183 countries on its Gender Gap index. While that is a startling number, Berlinski noted that she’d

“like to see the data broken down a lot more. Turkey is a big country. What’s happening in Istanbul may have nothing to do with what’s happening in Diyarbakir; within Istanbul alone, Nisantasi (an upscale, wealthy neighborhood) and Sultanbeyli (a poor neighborhood) may as well be different planets.”

Rural Anatolia was a point that Turkish journalist Ahu Ozyurt brought up. She noted: “Girls have to take care of their siblings and help their mothers in rural Turkey. Families rarely afford to send all to school”.

She added that there is also the intense focus about “protecting the morality of the girl,” highlighting the cultural challenges that prevent Turkish girls from fulfilling their talent and potential.

That was something I highlighted in this Turkish Daily News column. My grandmother was illiterate because her parents didn’t see the utility of a girl knowing how to read or write – beyond “writing boys love letters.”

Many agreed that overcoming cultural stereotypes would require increased education. While there is near-universal enrolment of girls in primary school, the numbers start to slide in secondary school and drop further when it comes to higher education. Creating incentives and conditions for girls to stay in school is key.

Another suggestion made by Derya Kaya was to support more female entrepreneur and encourage more Turkish women to engage in start-ups and small business. As a fierce entrepreneurship junkie, I agree.

I also agreed with the points about engaging men into finding a solution to closing the Turkish gender gap. The empowerment of women cannot happen on its own. Men have an equal and important role to play to lift women up in Turkey. Many I know are eager to get engaged. We must hold them up as role models and include them in our fight for gender equality.

It is a fight that we’ll continue here at Turkish Philanthropy Funds for the next several weeks. Follow us on Facebook where we have a contest that will grant $10,000 to a Turkish organization supporting a girls’ empowerment project.

Turkish Girl Power

By Elmira Bayrasli

Turkey may be a rising economic star and emerging leader in the Middle East, but it still has long to go to close the gap on gender equality.

Released this week as the World Economic Forum convenes, the global network reports in its annual Gender Gap report that Turkey, the 16^th largest economy in the world, is 121 out of 135 countries when it comes to male-female disparity. That’s a problem. Problem is that it can’t just stay a problem.

Turkish Philanthropy Funds has been doing a lot to bridge the gap between Turkish men and women. Working with partners such as ACEV (The Mother and Child Education Foundation) and Cagdas Yasami Destekleme Dernegi, we’ve been putting girls to school and helping illiterate women learn to read.

Putting girls to school is especially important – and not because the UN Millennium Development Goals says so. Educating girls raises living standards and contributes to a country’s growth. It increases security and democracy. It improves their health (and that of their families) and saves lives. According to Women Deliver, “every year of education delays a girls’ marriage. Girls with secondary schooling are up to six times less likely to be married as children than girls with little or no education.”

Secondary education for girls does so much more than just delay marriage. It improves the lives of the children that they do eventually bare. “Each additional year of schooling for girls reduces infant mortality for their offspring by up to 10%.” These women provide better health care for their children. The children of women that have attended secondary education are more likely to attend secondary school as well and even go onto college. It is a positive cycle of progress that has proven to move communities forward.

But girls drop out of secondary school for a number of reasons:

Expenses: With tuition costs, school uniforms, supplies and books, poor families have to choose which child continues on in school. The child they select is most often a boy.

Puberty: As women start to go through puberty, finding separate facilities for them, or sanitary napkins is a challenge.

Culture: As a girl matures, there is the duel pressure of her to appear chaste and marry.

In Turkey, the number of girls enrolled in secondary school has been on the decrease. According to the World Bank, from 73.29 in 2008 to 71.28 in 2009. That is not a positive trend.

For the next 10 days, TPF will talk about how to improve the enrollment of girls in secondary school as well as empowering adolescent Turkish girls to realize their potential. We’re launching a Twitter campaign under the #gendergap hashtag that will donate $1 for every tweet or RT on empowering girls, up to $10,000. We’ll donate that $10,000 to programs or program supporting young teen girls in Turkey.

On January 31 at 2PM EST/9PM IST we’re hosting a Twitter chat on this topic.

Here is how you can participate:

1) RT @tphilanthropy whenever you see the hashtag #gendergap

2) Provide us information about resources on empowering young girls by using the hashtag #gendergap

3) Point us to an expert working on empowering young girls by using the hashtag #gendergap

Social Entrepreneurship on the Rise in Turkey

By Zeynep Meydanoglu and Matthias Scheffelmeier

The last decade has seen the rise of Turkey as a regional and global leader with a dynamic and strong economy. At the same time, Turkey has also been facing critical development and democratization goals with poor track records in human rights, women’s empowerment, its treatment of its minorities and journalists.

Can social entrepreneurship - with its potential to identify the right points of intervention – be just what Turkey needs to become a country where everyone can contribute to social change?

This was the question on the minds of everyone last month when prominent members of the American-Turkish diaspora – business leaders, students, academicians, lawyers, doctors and artists - gathered for a roundtable discussion on the future and potential of social entrepreneurship in Turkey. Contributions of Turkey’s leading social entrepreneurs, Ashoka founder Bill Drayton and Ashoka Fellows Ibrahim Betil and Nasuh Mahruki, declared the answer to be “yes”.

Ibrahim Betil, trained as an industrialist and banker, presented a prime example of how a country like Turkey can leverage its growing capacity in the business and social sectors: invest in its young population. This is what Ibrahim did ten years ago. In 2001, he turned his attention to putting in place opportunities for young adults to contribute to positive social action through their own initiative. He founded TOG- Community Volunteers Foundation of Turkey a leading youth organization touching the lives of thousands of youth in 90 universities across the country.

Nasuh Mahruki, an author, photographer and the first Turk to climb Mount Everest presented AKUT- Search and Rescue Association Turkey’s leading search and rescue organization. AKUT has not only saved countless lives but also has become a symbol promoting volunteerism, leadership, and civic initiative in the country. “We push our volunteers toward the deep realization that ordinary people can and must take ownership of their safety in crisis situations” says Nasuh “and by focusing on safety, an issue that is critical to men and women of all backgrounds, we make a broad change in public conceptions about the roles and responsibilities of citizenship”.

Bill Drayton highlighted that the emergence of these leaders in societies was no coincidence. “By 1980, there was a new generation coming up that was tired of the inefficiencies of the older order," Drayton says. “We could see that the historical moment had come for transformation.” It was a point that was repeated by Ibrahim and Nasuh. They emphasized the importance of social entrepreneurs in encouraging others to become engaged citizens and changemakers. "Each social entrepreneur is a role model. His or her success will encourage many others to stand up, care and organize," remarked Bill Drayton. As 2012 gets underway, it’s a good message to go into the new year with. Let’s get to work.