Your passion and purpose has propelled TPF from $1.4million in 2008 to $3.8 million in 2009 to a $12 million charitable organization this year.
We look forward to helping you make 2011 your most rewarding giving year to date!
Thursday, March 17, 2011
TPF's 2nd Annual Report
Your passion and purpose has propelled TPF from $1.4million in 2008 to $3.8 million in 2009 to a $12 million charitable organization this year.
We look forward to helping you make 2011 your most rewarding giving year to date!
Monday, March 14, 2011
Japan Earthquake Relief Fund
Turkish Philanthropy Funds extends its heartfelt sympathy and deepest condolences to the people of Japan.
To assist our friends at Japan Society, TPF has created a Japan Earthquake Relief Fund. 100 % of your contributions will go to organizations that directly help victims recover from the devastating effects of the earthquake and tsunamis that struck Japan on March 11, 2011 through Japan Society.
To contribute to the Japan Earthquake Relief Fund online through TPF, click here.
You can also contribute to the Japan Earthquake Relief Fund by sending your check to:
Turkish Philanthropy Funds
Re: Japan Earthquake Relief Fund
216 East 45th Street, 7th Fl.
New York, New York 10017
Please make your checks payable to Turkish Philanthropy Funds and indicate “Japan Earthquake” on the check. For additional information, please email info@tpfund.org.
If you have a Donor-Advised Fund with TPF, please call 646.530.8988.
To assist our friends at Japan Society, TPF has created a Japan Earthquake Relief Fund. 100 % of your contributions will go to organizations that directly help victims recover from the devastating effects of the earthquake and tsunamis that struck Japan on March 11, 2011 through Japan Society.
To contribute to the Japan Earthquake Relief Fund online through TPF, click here.
You can also contribute to the Japan Earthquake Relief Fund by sending your check to:
Turkish Philanthropy Funds
Re: Japan Earthquake Relief Fund
216 East 45th Street, 7th Fl.
New York, New York 10017
Please make your checks payable to Turkish Philanthropy Funds and indicate “Japan Earthquake” on the check. For additional information, please email info@tpfund.org.
If you have a Donor-Advised Fund with TPF, please call 646.530.8988.
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
Turkish Life, Turkish Women
By Elmira Bayrasli
Turkish women, Raquel Fernandez, professor of economics at NYU, says, are among the most satisfied with their roles as housewives compared to other women around the world. She explains this through culture and why it matters to economic development, which has been exploding in Turkey over the past several years. So where are the women?
So much has been written about Turkish women and the need to support their empowerment. Turkish Philanthropy Funds is at the forefront leading this effort through its programs dedicated to gender equality and education. I wrote about my favorite program, spearheaded by the Mother Child Education Foundation (ACEV) a few months back.
But more needs to be done beyond education to fully integrate women into all aspects of Turkish life. Turkish women are, as the country’s founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk recognized, vital to country’s dynamism and success. No surprise he ensured that Turkey’s women were granted the right to vote and equal access to education. On the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day, it’s important to recognize hail the numerous bold efforts to help Turkish women realize their enormous potential.
• Newsweek and Daily Beast chief Tina Brown has hailed Pinar Ilkkaracan one of 150 women who “shake the world.” Ilkkaracan will participate in the conference named just that this week for her work on women’s human rights. She heads two NGO’s, Women for Women’s Human Rights – New Ways and The Coalition for Sexual and Bodily Rights in Muslim Societies. Both have been key in advocating for increased women’s rights.
• When a 16-year old girl was found last year to have been buried alive by her relatives for “talking to boys,” I immediately thought of Mor Cati. Known as “purple roof” in English, Mor Cati was born out of a “resistance movement” against violence against women in 1987. It has become one of the most important organizations providing refuge for abused women through shelters and a hotline.
• A hotline into the brutal world of war is what journalist Nadire Mater has provided us with her book, Voices from the Front. It’s an account of Turkish soldiers in the trenches, fighting Kurdish separatists. It brings us first-hand accounts of the fears these young men hold and faulty policies their superiors advance. It is the hallmark of Mater’s tireless work in human rights and her insistence of bring it to light through human stories.
• Stories are what Anastasia Ashman, Rose Deniz and Tara Agacayak have been bringing to Turkey and the worldwide community of “hybrid ambassadors.” Inspired by Ashman’s wonderful book Expat Harem, these writers, artists and entrepreneurs are translating life in Turkey, for themselves as well as for women all over the world who grapple with fitting in.
• And finally a woman bringing Turkey to the world: Melek Pulatkonak founded Turkish Women's International Network with the goal of connecting professional women and friends of Turkey to leverage their collective power for those Turkish women who aspire to join them. It's a badly needed platform that I'm proud to be a part of.
Here are a few. We’d love your suggestions for more. Please participate in the conversation.
Go to TPF website.
Turkish women, Raquel Fernandez, professor of economics at NYU, says, are among the most satisfied with their roles as housewives compared to other women around the world. She explains this through culture and why it matters to economic development, which has been exploding in Turkey over the past several years. So where are the women?
So much has been written about Turkish women and the need to support their empowerment. Turkish Philanthropy Funds is at the forefront leading this effort through its programs dedicated to gender equality and education. I wrote about my favorite program, spearheaded by the Mother Child Education Foundation (ACEV) a few months back.
But more needs to be done beyond education to fully integrate women into all aspects of Turkish life. Turkish women are, as the country’s founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk recognized, vital to country’s dynamism and success. No surprise he ensured that Turkey’s women were granted the right to vote and equal access to education. On the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day, it’s important to recognize hail the numerous bold efforts to help Turkish women realize their enormous potential.
• Newsweek and Daily Beast chief Tina Brown has hailed Pinar Ilkkaracan one of 150 women who “shake the world.” Ilkkaracan will participate in the conference named just that this week for her work on women’s human rights. She heads two NGO’s, Women for Women’s Human Rights – New Ways and The Coalition for Sexual and Bodily Rights in Muslim Societies. Both have been key in advocating for increased women’s rights.
• When a 16-year old girl was found last year to have been buried alive by her relatives for “talking to boys,” I immediately thought of Mor Cati. Known as “purple roof” in English, Mor Cati was born out of a “resistance movement” against violence against women in 1987. It has become one of the most important organizations providing refuge for abused women through shelters and a hotline.
• A hotline into the brutal world of war is what journalist Nadire Mater has provided us with her book, Voices from the Front. It’s an account of Turkish soldiers in the trenches, fighting Kurdish separatists. It brings us first-hand accounts of the fears these young men hold and faulty policies their superiors advance. It is the hallmark of Mater’s tireless work in human rights and her insistence of bring it to light through human stories.
• Stories are what Anastasia Ashman, Rose Deniz and Tara Agacayak have been bringing to Turkey and the worldwide community of “hybrid ambassadors.” Inspired by Ashman’s wonderful book Expat Harem, these writers, artists and entrepreneurs are translating life in Turkey, for themselves as well as for women all over the world who grapple with fitting in.
• And finally a woman bringing Turkey to the world: Melek Pulatkonak founded Turkish Women's International Network with the goal of connecting professional women and friends of Turkey to leverage their collective power for those Turkish women who aspire to join them. It's a badly needed platform that I'm proud to be a part of.
Here are a few. We’d love your suggestions for more. Please participate in the conversation.
Go to TPF website.
Friday, February 25, 2011
An Inspiring Philanthropist, Morris Schinasi
Excerpted from Turk of America Magazine
By Naim Güleryüz / Researcher-Writer
Mrs. Laurette Schinasi came to Turkey in 1930 to meet with Department of Health officials in order to present a petition to found a children’s hospital in Manisa in line with the last will and testament of her husband, Morris Schinasi; he had died three years previously in the USA. Construction began immediately, following approval by the Department, and the then International Moris Şinasi Hospital was commissioned in 1933; it still serves the public today, as the Moris Şinasi Children’s Hospital.
Morris was born in 1855 in Manisa to a relatively poor Sephardic family as one of four children; he had two brothers (Solomon, also known as Shlomo, and Yaakov) and a sister (Sultana.) Sephardic Jews, Spanish and Portuguese Jews, opted to leave their homeland in 1492 and thereafter rather than submit to forced conversion to Catholicism. The majority of the Sephardim settled in Ottoman lands following an invitation by Sultan Bayezid II. Of the 20,000 Jews still living in Turkey, some 96% are Sephardic.
Morris was forced to leave school and begin work when he was young. Falling ill at the age of 14, Morris was treated in hospital and soon appreciated the value of education. In 1870, at the age of 15 and with all he had to his name-- two Mecidiye (Imperial gold coins)--he sailed to Egypt in search of new opportunities and began to work for a Greek tobacco merchant named Garofollo in Alexandria. Garofollo traded in tobacco as well as in the manufacture of cigarettes. He liked this intelligent, diligent, ambitious and driven young man and took him under his wing.
MORRIS’S DREAM
The year was 1890. Morris was 35 and his big dreams carried him far. Borrowing US$25,000 from his beloved boss Garofollo, he immigrated to the USA in 1892 and exhibited the cigarette-rolling machine he had designed himself at the Chicago Fair. Until then, every single cigarette had been hand-rolled, paper and tobacco being purchased separately; this new machine created a good deal of interest. He repaid the US$25,000 loan and sent out for his brother Solomon (Shlomo.) Once Shlomo had arrived in New York, they established the “Schinasi Brothers Company” on Broadway and 120th Street.
According to author Rıfat N. Bali, writer of ‘Moses’ Children, Republican Citizens’, their Egyptian Prettiest brand Turkish cigarettes, rolled with Turkish tobacco, soon became very popular. True to his origins and his own poor childhood, Morris invited Turkish workers, in particular from Manisa, to work in his factory. At one point there were some 200 Manisa Jews working there.
Morris lived as a bachelor until the age of 48; it was during a business visit to Salonica that he met the granddaughter of a colleague, Joseph Ben Rubi. He married the 16-year-old Laurette in 1903. They had three daughters (Victoria, Juliette and Altina).
ABDULHAMID II HONOURED
The New York Times reported on 7 March 1916, Schinasi Brothers sold their two million-dollar cigarette factories and all commercial rights to the business to the Tobacco Products Corporation in 1916 in exchange for three and a half million dollars and retired. Morris’s son Leon was elected to the board of the new company; he left this position in July 1918 and joined the Standard Commercial Tobacco Company as Vice-President and General Manager.
Abdülhamid II honoured Morris with a Mecidiye of the Fourth Order in 1906 for his services to the Turkish economy by importing Turkish tobacco to the USA and his son Leon (who had a soft spot for horses) was presented with a pure Arab stallion from the Ottoman stud line. The presentation was carried out by HE Mehmet Ali Bey, the Ottoman Ambassador to Washington, in July 1908.
The Schinasi brothers of Manisa, who were members of the Anatolian Sephardim Union and Peace Society as well as the Shearith Israel Synagogue in New York, joined many other institutions in the city to help other Sephardim in need. One of the leading such institutions, The Federation of Oriental Jews, elected Morris Schinasi Honorary President on the 7th of June 1914 at a meeting attended by over one thousand Sephardim at the school at 91 Forsyth Street, New York.
Solomon (Shlomo) died on Saturday, the 4th of October, 1919, following a two-week coronary illness, at his Villa Julia on Riverside and 89th Avenue. This mansion, which had originally been purchased from Isaac L. Rice, currently houses the Yeshiva Ketana Jewish school and is owned by a a law professor at Columbia University.
Morris died in September 1929 at the age of 74; in his will, he had designated a large portion of his wealth, well over five million dollars, to charity. A one-million-dollar fund was entrusted to the Chemical Bank and Trust Co. of New York for the express purpose of founding a hospital in Manisa, the town of his birth.
Morris never forgot his home country of Turkey; many of the rooms in the marble French Renaissance mansion he commissioned in 1909 (the architect was the famous William B. Tuthill, who had previously designed Carnegie Hall) at Number 351 Riverside Drive, 107th Avenue, were done in a Turkish style. The bathroom was set out like a Turkish bath with washbasins typical of that layout. This building is currently listed as a historical building and in 1979 was sold to Hans Smit, a law professor at Columbia University.
The surname Schinasi is thought to be a version of the popular Jewish surname Ashkenazi; yet Morris’s daughter Altina was unable to confirm this point during our interview. Altina was born on the 4th of August 1907; during her career as a shopwindow decorator, the Harlequin spectacles she had designed in the 1930s had proved highly popular. Altina had published her memoirs in “The Road I Have Travelled” (Apodaca Hill Press, New Mexico, 1995) and died in her home in Santa Fe on Thursday the August 12, 1999.
This, in short, is the life story of little Morris, who was cured of his illness at a hospital and who, when he became a successful businessman far from his homeland, never forgot his origins, bestowing a valuable institution for the aid of the less fortunate. May his story inspire us all.
MORİS ŞİNASİ CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL
Laurette Schinasi and Huntington Turner, a manager at Chemical Bank, travelled to Turkey and met the then Secretary of Health Dr. Refik Saydam and high-ranking officials on the 27th of April 1930. Long negotiations resulted in an accord on land allotment, construction and operation as well as the use of the fund. $200,000 of the fund was set aside for construction and equipment while the remaining $800,000 was deposited in Ziraat Bank, with interest to be paid to the hospital annually. The equipment and consumables for the hospital were imported on the basis of a special duty waiver as per Bill Number 1907, dated the 28th of December 1931.
The hospital was set in the midst of a seven-acre garden and equipped with state-of-the-art equipment and instruments. The architect was W. Stuart Thompson and construction began on the 1st of June 1932. Open prison inmates worked on the site; construction finished in a short time and the hospital was inaugurated on the 15th of August 1933 at a ceremony attended by the Governor of Manisa, Lütfü Kırdar. The hospital began to accept patients officially on the 1st of October 1933. Serving as a general hospital until 1968, it joined the Department of Health in that year and was recommissioned as a Children’s Hospital.
When it was first opened, the hospital grew its own vegetables in its garden and obtained eggs from its own chickens; the Head’s official vehicle was a horse-drawn carriage and the ambulance was a horse-cart. The horse was until recently listed as capital equipment and only dropped off the list when it died.
In time, the hospital’s own water source was handed over to the military and the small woods in the garden made way for concrete buildings; yet it still maintains its original 1930s look as well as the majority of its original infrastructure, such as the heating and air conditioning systems. This nostalgic aspect is reinforced by such details as the historic elevator that still works on a mechanical pulley system.
Thanks to the financial assistance provided by the original fund and additional State help, the buildings, now used as Health Directorate and School of Medicine, have been restored, rebuilt as needed and equipped with the latest technology. The boiler room was the most recent restoration and now serves as a modern laboratory. Upper floor rooms that were unused have been renovated and now serve as a private patients’ wing. The Celal Bayar University School of Medicine was opened on the 1st of March 1994 and the Moris Şinasi Hospital was taken over by a 23rd of April 1994 protocol from the Department of Health. The annex, the construction of which was finished in 1995, was added to the compound.
The Moris Şinasi Children’s Hospital, led by a selfless health team, serves the children in the area; it is one of seven children’s hospitals in the country. In-patients numbered 2,879 in 1999 and 2,032 between January and August 2000. Out-patients numbered 34,313. Occupancy rates were 54.6% in 1999 and 59.5% in the first eight months of 2000. Some 239 surgical procedures were carried out in eight months, eight of which were major operations. During the same time period, some 4,609 X-rays were taken.
The fund has been successfully managed by Chase Bank, as it’s now called; officials pay a visit to the hospital every other year and hand over the annual income. In addition, a Moris Şinasi State Children’s Hospital Development Society has been founded to support the hospital.
Go to TPF website.
By Naim Güleryüz / Researcher-Writer
Mrs. Laurette Schinasi came to Turkey in 1930 to meet with Department of Health officials in order to present a petition to found a children’s hospital in Manisa in line with the last will and testament of her husband, Morris Schinasi; he had died three years previously in the USA. Construction began immediately, following approval by the Department, and the then International Moris Şinasi Hospital was commissioned in 1933; it still serves the public today, as the Moris Şinasi Children’s Hospital.
Morris was born in 1855 in Manisa to a relatively poor Sephardic family as one of four children; he had two brothers (Solomon, also known as Shlomo, and Yaakov) and a sister (Sultana.) Sephardic Jews, Spanish and Portuguese Jews, opted to leave their homeland in 1492 and thereafter rather than submit to forced conversion to Catholicism. The majority of the Sephardim settled in Ottoman lands following an invitation by Sultan Bayezid II. Of the 20,000 Jews still living in Turkey, some 96% are Sephardic.
Morris was forced to leave school and begin work when he was young. Falling ill at the age of 14, Morris was treated in hospital and soon appreciated the value of education. In 1870, at the age of 15 and with all he had to his name-- two Mecidiye (Imperial gold coins)--he sailed to Egypt in search of new opportunities and began to work for a Greek tobacco merchant named Garofollo in Alexandria. Garofollo traded in tobacco as well as in the manufacture of cigarettes. He liked this intelligent, diligent, ambitious and driven young man and took him under his wing.
MORRIS’S DREAM
The year was 1890. Morris was 35 and his big dreams carried him far. Borrowing US$25,000 from his beloved boss Garofollo, he immigrated to the USA in 1892 and exhibited the cigarette-rolling machine he had designed himself at the Chicago Fair. Until then, every single cigarette had been hand-rolled, paper and tobacco being purchased separately; this new machine created a good deal of interest. He repaid the US$25,000 loan and sent out for his brother Solomon (Shlomo.) Once Shlomo had arrived in New York, they established the “Schinasi Brothers Company” on Broadway and 120th Street.
According to author Rıfat N. Bali, writer of ‘Moses’ Children, Republican Citizens’, their Egyptian Prettiest brand Turkish cigarettes, rolled with Turkish tobacco, soon became very popular. True to his origins and his own poor childhood, Morris invited Turkish workers, in particular from Manisa, to work in his factory. At one point there were some 200 Manisa Jews working there.
Morris lived as a bachelor until the age of 48; it was during a business visit to Salonica that he met the granddaughter of a colleague, Joseph Ben Rubi. He married the 16-year-old Laurette in 1903. They had three daughters (Victoria, Juliette and Altina).
ABDULHAMID II HONOURED
The New York Times reported on 7 March 1916, Schinasi Brothers sold their two million-dollar cigarette factories and all commercial rights to the business to the Tobacco Products Corporation in 1916 in exchange for three and a half million dollars and retired. Morris’s son Leon was elected to the board of the new company; he left this position in July 1918 and joined the Standard Commercial Tobacco Company as Vice-President and General Manager.
Abdülhamid II honoured Morris with a Mecidiye of the Fourth Order in 1906 for his services to the Turkish economy by importing Turkish tobacco to the USA and his son Leon (who had a soft spot for horses) was presented with a pure Arab stallion from the Ottoman stud line. The presentation was carried out by HE Mehmet Ali Bey, the Ottoman Ambassador to Washington, in July 1908.
The Schinasi brothers of Manisa, who were members of the Anatolian Sephardim Union and Peace Society as well as the Shearith Israel Synagogue in New York, joined many other institutions in the city to help other Sephardim in need. One of the leading such institutions, The Federation of Oriental Jews, elected Morris Schinasi Honorary President on the 7th of June 1914 at a meeting attended by over one thousand Sephardim at the school at 91 Forsyth Street, New York.
Solomon (Shlomo) died on Saturday, the 4th of October, 1919, following a two-week coronary illness, at his Villa Julia on Riverside and 89th Avenue. This mansion, which had originally been purchased from Isaac L. Rice, currently houses the Yeshiva Ketana Jewish school and is owned by a a law professor at Columbia University.
Morris died in September 1929 at the age of 74; in his will, he had designated a large portion of his wealth, well over five million dollars, to charity. A one-million-dollar fund was entrusted to the Chemical Bank and Trust Co. of New York for the express purpose of founding a hospital in Manisa, the town of his birth.
Morris never forgot his home country of Turkey; many of the rooms in the marble French Renaissance mansion he commissioned in 1909 (the architect was the famous William B. Tuthill, who had previously designed Carnegie Hall) at Number 351 Riverside Drive, 107th Avenue, were done in a Turkish style. The bathroom was set out like a Turkish bath with washbasins typical of that layout. This building is currently listed as a historical building and in 1979 was sold to Hans Smit, a law professor at Columbia University.
The surname Schinasi is thought to be a version of the popular Jewish surname Ashkenazi; yet Morris’s daughter Altina was unable to confirm this point during our interview. Altina was born on the 4th of August 1907; during her career as a shopwindow decorator, the Harlequin spectacles she had designed in the 1930s had proved highly popular. Altina had published her memoirs in “The Road I Have Travelled” (Apodaca Hill Press, New Mexico, 1995) and died in her home in Santa Fe on Thursday the August 12, 1999.
This, in short, is the life story of little Morris, who was cured of his illness at a hospital and who, when he became a successful businessman far from his homeland, never forgot his origins, bestowing a valuable institution for the aid of the less fortunate. May his story inspire us all.
MORİS ŞİNASİ CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL
Laurette Schinasi and Huntington Turner, a manager at Chemical Bank, travelled to Turkey and met the then Secretary of Health Dr. Refik Saydam and high-ranking officials on the 27th of April 1930. Long negotiations resulted in an accord on land allotment, construction and operation as well as the use of the fund. $200,000 of the fund was set aside for construction and equipment while the remaining $800,000 was deposited in Ziraat Bank, with interest to be paid to the hospital annually. The equipment and consumables for the hospital were imported on the basis of a special duty waiver as per Bill Number 1907, dated the 28th of December 1931.
The hospital was set in the midst of a seven-acre garden and equipped with state-of-the-art equipment and instruments. The architect was W. Stuart Thompson and construction began on the 1st of June 1932. Open prison inmates worked on the site; construction finished in a short time and the hospital was inaugurated on the 15th of August 1933 at a ceremony attended by the Governor of Manisa, Lütfü Kırdar. The hospital began to accept patients officially on the 1st of October 1933. Serving as a general hospital until 1968, it joined the Department of Health in that year and was recommissioned as a Children’s Hospital.
When it was first opened, the hospital grew its own vegetables in its garden and obtained eggs from its own chickens; the Head’s official vehicle was a horse-drawn carriage and the ambulance was a horse-cart. The horse was until recently listed as capital equipment and only dropped off the list when it died.
In time, the hospital’s own water source was handed over to the military and the small woods in the garden made way for concrete buildings; yet it still maintains its original 1930s look as well as the majority of its original infrastructure, such as the heating and air conditioning systems. This nostalgic aspect is reinforced by such details as the historic elevator that still works on a mechanical pulley system.
Thanks to the financial assistance provided by the original fund and additional State help, the buildings, now used as Health Directorate and School of Medicine, have been restored, rebuilt as needed and equipped with the latest technology. The boiler room was the most recent restoration and now serves as a modern laboratory. Upper floor rooms that were unused have been renovated and now serve as a private patients’ wing. The Celal Bayar University School of Medicine was opened on the 1st of March 1994 and the Moris Şinasi Hospital was taken over by a 23rd of April 1994 protocol from the Department of Health. The annex, the construction of which was finished in 1995, was added to the compound.
The Moris Şinasi Children’s Hospital, led by a selfless health team, serves the children in the area; it is one of seven children’s hospitals in the country. In-patients numbered 2,879 in 1999 and 2,032 between January and August 2000. Out-patients numbered 34,313. Occupancy rates were 54.6% in 1999 and 59.5% in the first eight months of 2000. Some 239 surgical procedures were carried out in eight months, eight of which were major operations. During the same time period, some 4,609 X-rays were taken.
The fund has been successfully managed by Chase Bank, as it’s now called; officials pay a visit to the hospital every other year and hand over the annual income. In addition, a Moris Şinasi State Children’s Hospital Development Society has been founded to support the hospital.
Go to TPF website.
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
The Beri(1) Road To Development:The Problems Of Rural Women In Turkey
Posted by Nurcan Baysal, Hüsnü M. Özyeğin Vakfı
“Here, local women walk up to highlands to milk their animals everyday, from June to September. We start out at around 10 in the morning and we reach our animals at around 1 pm. Milking takes half an hour. Then we walk back, each of us with a load of 10 to 25 liters of milk on our backs. Back home, we get busy again with childcare, boiling the milk, preparing dinner etc. This lasts until 5 pm. After that, we again spend 2.5 hours walking to “beri”, which means the beri takes 5 hours each day… You talk about ‘rural development’. I don’t quite get what it means, but it would be good for us, women, if you could improve the road to “beri”. The road now is too stony, our feet get hurt and it is too tiresome. It will make our lives easier if this road were to be improved. I wish there was a tractor to take us to “beri” and bring back.” (Female, age 28, Duzcealan Village, married with 2 children)(2)
Duzcealan village is in Southeastern Turkey, considered one of the poorest parts of the country. There, 56% of the women are illiterate, only 27% of the village’s children continue to middle school and there has been massive emigration.
Since 2008, the Özyeğin Foundation has been implementing an integrated rural development program in Tatvan, Bitlis consisting of seven villages. Duzcealan is one of those villages. Called the Kavar Basin Rural Development Project, the project aims to restart the region’s economy by increasing agricultural and livestock production. It’s doing so by working specifically with women and children. That is an important factor.
The problems in this region reflect the problems Turkish women face throughout Turkey. Unfortunately because these women are in remote areas their problems often go unaddressed. That’s a big issue. Women make up 48.5% of the people employed in the Turkish agricultural sector (Male employment in the agricultural sector is 19.8%). Only 1.5% of women who work in agriculture are recorded officially as laborers, while 98.5 % are unrecorded labor working without pay or any social security in family lands. That these women make tremendous economic contributions but are not compensated or recognized is of great concern.
In Turkey, despite great emphasis on women’s rights, the challenges rural women face have been ignored. There are few programs focused on defending the rights of rural women and highlighting the problems they face as agricultural workers. That the government equates rural development with agricultural development and ignores the social aspect of the problem has resulted in little or no advancement for rural women. This makes the Özyeğin Foundation’s Kavar Basin Rural Development Project ever more meaningful.
Since starting work many different activities have been implemented for the social and economic empowerment of the Kavar villagers.
Fast initial steps have been taken to improve farming. More than 10,000 fruit trees have been distributed. Barns have been modernized to increase the efficiency in animal husbandry. Most importantly, training has been held for farmers to get them acquainted with different methods of production, sustaining natural resources, and farmers' cooperatives. These training have resulted in a joint cooperative with members from six villages to engage in milk production and sales. This was an especially worthy accomplishment as there were many conflicts amongst villages merely a year ago.
With 40% of Kavar farmers being women, special attention has gone into their empowerment. Kavar women have been provided training sessions on health, women rights, child-care, protection of environment, and animal health. Many have been enrolled in high school and literacy courses. An entrepreneurship project entitled “Women in the Kavar” has enabled them to produce flowers that are being marketed to neighboring towns.
The Özyeğin Foundation’s Kavar Basin Rural Development Project has also focused on ensuring female education. In every village, rural community centers and housing facilities for teachers have been built. The area’s young people have been supported with extra courses to get them ready for university exams. Those admitted have been awarded scholarships.
The Özyeğin model applied in the Kavar Basin is hoping to reverse migration to villages. Focusing on women has been an important first step.
(1) “Beri” a local word for highlands where animals are kept during summer months.
(2) Ozyegin Foundation, Field Research Report, Kavar, Bitlis, August 2008
Visit TPF's website.
“Here, local women walk up to highlands to milk their animals everyday, from June to September. We start out at around 10 in the morning and we reach our animals at around 1 pm. Milking takes half an hour. Then we walk back, each of us with a load of 10 to 25 liters of milk on our backs. Back home, we get busy again with childcare, boiling the milk, preparing dinner etc. This lasts until 5 pm. After that, we again spend 2.5 hours walking to “beri”, which means the beri takes 5 hours each day… You talk about ‘rural development’. I don’t quite get what it means, but it would be good for us, women, if you could improve the road to “beri”. The road now is too stony, our feet get hurt and it is too tiresome. It will make our lives easier if this road were to be improved. I wish there was a tractor to take us to “beri” and bring back.” (Female, age 28, Duzcealan Village, married with 2 children)(2)
Duzcealan village is in Southeastern Turkey, considered one of the poorest parts of the country. There, 56% of the women are illiterate, only 27% of the village’s children continue to middle school and there has been massive emigration.
Since 2008, the Özyeğin Foundation has been implementing an integrated rural development program in Tatvan, Bitlis consisting of seven villages. Duzcealan is one of those villages. Called the Kavar Basin Rural Development Project, the project aims to restart the region’s economy by increasing agricultural and livestock production. It’s doing so by working specifically with women and children. That is an important factor.
The problems in this region reflect the problems Turkish women face throughout Turkey. Unfortunately because these women are in remote areas their problems often go unaddressed. That’s a big issue. Women make up 48.5% of the people employed in the Turkish agricultural sector (Male employment in the agricultural sector is 19.8%). Only 1.5% of women who work in agriculture are recorded officially as laborers, while 98.5 % are unrecorded labor working without pay or any social security in family lands. That these women make tremendous economic contributions but are not compensated or recognized is of great concern.
In Turkey, despite great emphasis on women’s rights, the challenges rural women face have been ignored. There are few programs focused on defending the rights of rural women and highlighting the problems they face as agricultural workers. That the government equates rural development with agricultural development and ignores the social aspect of the problem has resulted in little or no advancement for rural women. This makes the Özyeğin Foundation’s Kavar Basin Rural Development Project ever more meaningful.
Since starting work many different activities have been implemented for the social and economic empowerment of the Kavar villagers.
Fast initial steps have been taken to improve farming. More than 10,000 fruit trees have been distributed. Barns have been modernized to increase the efficiency in animal husbandry. Most importantly, training has been held for farmers to get them acquainted with different methods of production, sustaining natural resources, and farmers' cooperatives. These training have resulted in a joint cooperative with members from six villages to engage in milk production and sales. This was an especially worthy accomplishment as there were many conflicts amongst villages merely a year ago.
With 40% of Kavar farmers being women, special attention has gone into their empowerment. Kavar women have been provided training sessions on health, women rights, child-care, protection of environment, and animal health. Many have been enrolled in high school and literacy courses. An entrepreneurship project entitled “Women in the Kavar” has enabled them to produce flowers that are being marketed to neighboring towns.
The Özyeğin Foundation’s Kavar Basin Rural Development Project has also focused on ensuring female education. In every village, rural community centers and housing facilities for teachers have been built. The area’s young people have been supported with extra courses to get them ready for university exams. Those admitted have been awarded scholarships.
The Özyeğin model applied in the Kavar Basin is hoping to reverse migration to villages. Focusing on women has been an important first step.
(1) “Beri” a local word for highlands where animals are kept during summer months.
(2) Ozyegin Foundation, Field Research Report, Kavar, Bitlis, August 2008
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Tuesday, January 18, 2011
What is your story? What is your super power?
Posted By Melek Pulatkonak
Just as everyone has a story, they also have a super power - however difficult it is to discover.
My story lies in my decision to launch the Turkish Women’s International Network (TurkishWIN). TurkishWIN is a global platform for women with cultural, family or professional ties to Turkey to invest, connect, empower and inspire each other.
I believe in the power that stories have to inspire. It is one of the reasons I am a fan of TED and TED talks. In just the span of 18-20 minutes, ideas are spread and superheroes are born. This is the effect TED speakers such as Elif Shafak and Karsu Sonmez have had.
But they are not the only ones with ideas and stories. Everyday I come across amazing Turkish women who inspire me. Women at the Turkish Philanthropy Funds, artists, amazing academics, business leaders and international students in New York. I want to share their inspiration with the world.
TurkishWIN, hopes to be a platform for these women, independent of geography, age and industry, to share ideas and tell their stories to emerging tribes and inspire others. You can watch some of the TurkishWIN talks online now.
I believe one person can make a difference. We all want to help someone with our networks, perhaps with as little as an email introduction. Yet, there is limited matchmaking mechanism to connect the dots.
At TurkishWIN, we aspire to become the platform for women to make a difference for others and build a bridge between the women in the Diaspora and Turkey who would like to collaborate.
Launched in November 2010 in New York, TurkishWIN’s talk series plans to expand TurkishWIN talks in Turkey and other cities. TurkishWIN initiatives in the works include a mentorship program, connecting a micro-lending organization targeting women in Turkey with a major online platform in the U.S. and a photo book/ online project, “A Day in the Life of the Turkish Woman,” the idea of our member Nilufer Durak Dogan.
Now you have heard my story. What is my super power? It is my unwavering belief in the strength and generosity of the Turkish woman.
I invite all amazing Turkish (Turkiyeli) women who have great stories to tell and would like to invest in the future of the community: Join the TurkishWIN!
Melek Pulatkonak is the Founder & Curator of the Turkish Women’s International Network. She is also the President& COO of hakia, a New York based semantic search engine.
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Wednesday, December 8, 2010
Migrant Agricultural Worker's Access to Health Services
Posted By Professor Dr. Zeynep Simsek
Harran University Medical School, Public Health Studies, Sanliurfa, Turkey
“Not seen or heard.” That’s what policymakers, political decision makers, civil and non-profit organizations, scientists and researchers say about seasonal migrant agricultural workers. At the heart of sustainable development, these migrant workers make up 450 million of the world’s 1.1 billion agricultural workforce. Unfortunately more than 60 percent live under the poverty level and 80 percent do not have social security.
They toil under harsh working conditions, such as chemical pesticides, dust, damage, cold and hot weather conditions, without access to proper healthcare. Combined with living in unhealthy living quarters, lack of access to clean water, and unsanitary hygienic conditions, many suffer from enormous health problems. Without question, seasonal migrant workers are one of society’s disadvantaged groups.
A new civil society organization in Turkey, Association of the Protection and Development of the Rights of Seasonal Agricultural Workers, created in November 2008, has been working to determine the main issues of concerns and to mobilize public institutions and other civil society organizations. The Turkish-based Sabanci Foundation Grant Program along with the UN Joint Program to Promote and Protect Human Rights of Women and Girls and the Turkish Philanthropy Funds (TPF) joined hands last year to assist this new organization in Sanliurfa, Turkey. A city located in southeastern Anatolia, Sanliurfa is home to a sizable migrant agricultural workforce. It is estimated that out of its 282,936 population, 44 percent (124,630) are migrant workers.
"Seasonal Migrant Workers Youth Program" which TPF supported through the Sabanci Foundation Grant Program of the UN Joint Program to Promote and Protect Human Rights of Women and Girls aimed to reduce social exclusion of seasonal migrant workers from the rest of society in Sanliurfa through the training of 25 peer leaders in a five-day workshop. The participants in the training were then asked to relay the information they have learned to at least 25 other peers in their communities so as to create a multiplier effect. During the training, the youth worked together to identify problems their families faced and learned about the solutions to address those problems, including their rights to basic health services, social services and educational services.
The organization takes on other projects that aim to contribute to the wellbeing of seasonal migrant workers such as "Seasonal Agriculture Worker's Women's and Girl's Access to Health Rights through Visiting Health Services." It’s a $10,000 project that is working with Sanliurfa’s municipality and its Directorate of Health to provide basic health services to migrant workers.
Among the services being delivered is a mobile visiting healthcare vehicle that includes a mini fridge to keep vaccines in, an examination table, gynecological facilities, and first aid kits. There are four of these vehicles deployed in the Sanliurfa municipality (comprised of 33 villages) with the support of the Sanliurfa city council. This service is not only addressing the migrant worker’s health needs, it is also transforming local government and community engagement on health issues in general.
Directly as a result of the scoping meetings conducted with the Sanliurfa health directorate and local city council, officials have collected vital information about the community’s health needs. Village headmen have been trained on how to obtain clean drinking water and how to reach health care services in the region.
On a larger scale, a budget for healthy living has been allocated and measures to prevent these issues in the future have been taken. Through these measures, Sanliurfa has become a role model for improving the lives of seasonal migrant agricultural workers. Through the municipality’s engagement, there have been solid steps toward better health care and living conditions. It is a wonderful example of community engagement on a critical social issue that previously no one could “see or hear” – but that now everyone can do something about.
Dr. Zeynep Simsek, a faculty member at the Harran University Medical School, specializes in Social Health Sciences. Her research and areas of expertise involves examining societal structures and their effects on the development of children and youth, specifically in Sanliurfa, a city in Eastern Turkey. Dr. Simsek has been working on projects that concern youth health and migratory workers' health and social rights issues.
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