Projects to receive Grant Support from the Sabancı Foundation in the New Season Announced

The Sabancı Foundation works with the mission of supporting equal opportunities and active participation in society for women, youth and individuals with disabilities and the non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that are eligible to receive support within the scope of the Foundation’s Grant Programs carried out for 15 years have been announced. The projects to be funded have been selected by the evaluation by the Board of Trustees of the Sabancı Foundation, upon the proposal of an independent Evaluation Board comprising a group of experts in the field who are experienced in the field of civil society. The Sabancı Foundation will provide grants to 7 projects this year in order to contribute to social development and strengthen the understanding of civil society. 

Nevgül Bilsel Safkan, General Manager of the Sabancı Foundation, stated that the Sabancı Foundation was the only foundation in Turkey that has been giving uninterrupted grant support to non-governmental organizations for 15 years, and added: “The Sabancı Foundation decided to develop the Grant Programs in 2007 in order to find more permanent solutions to social issues and make the resulting impact sustainable. In our activities we have been carrying out with the aim of contributing to social development for 47 years, we see how important it is to support civil society. In this direction, the grant supports we have provided to non-governmental organizations for 15 years will total TRY 32 million this year. This year, we will provide grant supports to 7 projects. We believe that good shared is good multiplied. We are very happy to support non-governmental organizations and make projects with them.”

Ms. Safkan said that due to the COVID-19 pandemic, they would allow flexibility as needed to realize the projects, as in the previous year, and added “The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a great digital transformation all over the world.” “For quite some time, we have all events and do our works online. This does reinforce the communication between non-governmental organizations, on one hand, but makes it impossible to conduct fieldwork or face-to-face training. That's why the Sabancı Foundation will try to allow flexibility as needed for the projects we fund this year, as we did last year, in order to make it easier for everyone in this period and to achieve the project goals,” she added.

This year, the Grant Programs of the Sabancı Foundation received 346 project applications from 54 provinces all across Turkey. The Grant Programs supports those NGOs that implement projects in "supporting high-quality education", "ensuring access to education and attendance” and "supporting rights-based non-formal training efforts” to solve certain social problems faced by women, young people, and individuals with disabilities by offering knowledge and experience as well as financial support. 

The non-governmental organizations and their projects qualified to receive funding support:

•The project “Value to My City" of the Four Seasons Lifelong Play and Learning Association aims to enable young people to play an active role in creating an innovative, inclusive, and needs-based urban policy, and develop the practice of working together between young people and local governments.

•The project “Kids: The Compass of a City” of the Hempa Children's Association aims to raise the awareness of the right to the city of socio-economically disabled or refugee children living in two neighborhoods in Altındağ district of Ankara and increase their belonging to the city.

•The project “Social Gender Sensitivity of Gender-neutral Professional and Professional Chambers” of the Anka Producing Women's Association aims to disseminate awareness of gender equality to all segments of society through training and advocacy activities for professional chambers in Mersin.

•The project “We Empower Women in Local Governments” of the Association for Supporting of Women Candidates aims to provide training on gender equality to the personnel of 14 municipalities in seven different regions, NGOs in the provinces and women, and to establish of a municipality-NGO network.

•The project “Deaf and Hearing Impaired Women's Rights Education Platform” of the Dem Association aims to raise awareness of deaf and hearing-impaired women about their rights, especially violence against women and mechanisms to combat violence.

•The project "Parıltı and TÜRGÖK Prepare Blind Youth for YKS" of the Parıltı Support Association for Children with Visual Impairments aims to inform young people with visual impairment who are in the 12th grade or who have graduated from high school and will take the Higher Education Institutions Exam (YKS) about the process and to support them in their preparation for the exam.

•The project “Bilingual Reading Development Applications for Turkish Sign Language Knowing Deaf Children” of the Association of People with Hearing Impairment of Turkey aims to develop an APP for 5 bilingual interactive children storybooks in order to support reading skills, language and cognitive development of deaf or visually impaired children over the age of 4.