A little child, who plays with joy, suddenly falls weak, runs a fever and is taken to the hospital. He sets on a journey that takes 3 years. He is now in another world, in a battle called leukemia, all alone… Moreover, he loses his hair, has bleedings, and his body resistance and immune system collapses. The same difficulties are experienced not only in our country, but in the whole world. Barack Obama mentioned about the same issue in his victory speech, which he addressed to the world on November 7, 2012:

“And I saw just the other day, in Ohio, where a father told the story of his 8-year-old daughter, whose long battle with leukemia nearly cost their family everything… And when he spoke to the crowd listening to that father’s story, every parent in that room had tears in their eyes, because we knew that little girl could be our own.”

Let us set aside our routines, ambitions to earn money or to gain power, for a week, for a few days or at least for a few hours. Let us support the children of the world, who share the same destiny and who struggle against leukemia. Let us try to understand their innocent worlds, remember that our children could also have leukemia and not leave them alone. Let us declare them as “Our True Heroes” who have tiny brave hearts battle against leukemia monster. Let us celebrate this week, which is going to be organized for the 12th time, as “our” week, not “theirs” and celebrate with a huge turnout.  We look forward to all over Turkey to our outdoors, saloon and sea events.

Best regards,

Pediatric Hematologist

Üstün EZER, MD.

Chairman of the LÖSEV Board

 

Tomorrow starts the 12th Annual
International Week for Children with Leukemia
“Our True Heros”

This week, LOSEV will bring together children from around the world who speak different languages, yet share the same fate. The aim is to unite today’s children and life-changing adults of tomorrow, who are our true heroes to show once again we want to end this war with cancer. You can be the difference in their lives. Donate today.

Burcu and Mete Tuncel will match your donations 1:1 up to $10,000.

#NotoCancer – Join the conversation on Twitter.

Do you have a specific cause in mind on how to give back to Turkey? Are the logistics of the donation holding you back? Take a lesson from TPF donor, Ugur Sabuncu, and donate through TPF to make your gift seamlessly.

Ugur Sabuncu of Georgia contacted TPF when he needed help donating medical equipment to Istanbul University’s Faculty of Medicine. His first shipment of donated material came all the way from Taiwan. Instead of having to handle all of the shipping, customs and understand all laws surrounding the gift, he passed this task over to TPF. We were happy to help Ugur with the pass-through donation.

We have since helped Ugur donate, once again. This time, he chose to give Istanbul University’s Medical Faculty an ultrasound machine.

If you have any questions, email info@tpfund.org for additional information.

Dear Friend:

Happy Mother’s Day!

I am a big fan of Turkish Philanthropy Funds. I might have a bias since my son, Mustafa Kemal Abadan, is one of the founders and serves on TPF board. But, beyond that, TPF’s commitment to philanthropy has never ceased to amaze and inspire me.

So, I hope you’ll join me in supporting TPF’s girls education initiative for Mother’s Day this year.

I am proud to endorse the work of TPF – supporting education, helping after disasters, giving individuals and communities the chance to succeed and so. But the issue that is dear to my heart is girl’s education. It is dear to my heart because I am who I am because of the educational opportunities given to me by the early Turkish Republic.

I am the first female academician who introduced political science in the curriculum of a pure male School of Administration ( Mektebi Mülkiye-Siyasal Bilgiler Fakültesi) following a Fulbright scholarship at Minneapolis, MN in 1952-53. I became the first female faculty member of the Political Science Facuty of Ankara University in December of 1953. Then, the first full female professor, the first chair holder of Political Behavior, the first director of the School of Journalism attached to the School of Political Science. I represented Turkey on the Committee of Equality of Women/Men in the Council of Europe, 1978-1993. When I started my academic career I was the only women. Today, in the same institution, which will celebrate its 154th anniversary on December 4, 2013, there will be 41 female faculty members out of 100. I first handedly know how your life can change if you’re given the opportunities to learn.

My grandparents were from Bosnia, Sarajevo. They moved to the Aegean province of İzmir at the end of the 19th century during the Ottoman rule. After my father, an export businessman, married my mother, Baroness Elfriede whom he met in Carlsbad (today Czech Republic), they lived in Vienna and was commuting from İzmir to Hamburg (Germany) where he had an office. I was born in Vienna. We moved to İstanbul in the late 1920s and stayed there until 1931. My father passed away unexpectedly that same year. After his death my mother took me to Budapest where my step-sister was living. I was put into a boarding school. But after a while my mother could’nt find money to send me to school. It was a devastation for me as I loved school and was a very good student.

Fluent in German (my mother tongue), good in  French, later English and Hungarian but not knowing Turkish, at the age of 14, I knocked on the door of the Turkish Embassy in Budapest. I was reading in magazines about the new Turkish Republic and the reforms Atatürk and his colleagues were doing in the country. Due to the sympathy of the portier at the entrance I managed to be admitted to see the Ambassador. I told the Ambassador in French : “My father was exporting dry fruits and hazelnuts to Europe, being permanently away, and my mother having me tutored at home I do not know Turkish. But I want to continue to go to school. My mother says our savings are finished, she can’t send me to school. Please, send me to my relatives in Turkey, perhaps they can help me or send me there to school.” The Ambassador, Behiç Erkin, told me to come back three days later. I went back three days later. The Ambassador gave me a return passport, a third class ticket and some vouchers for meals on the train. My mother and step-sister learned about my decision only after everything was prepared. They hoped I would come back and bring some money to continue my studies. I boarded the train on November 6, 1936 in Budapest. I never saw my mother again – she perished during World War II.

After my arrival in İstanbul, it was the head of the police in Sirkeci who saw to it that I received an accomodation on a boat leaving for İzmir. My unannounced arrival at my uncle’s home caused great commotion. I moved from one relative’s place to the other and then finally settled in İzmir after I was admitted to the İzmir Girls’ Lycée. I worked in the summer of 1939 to save money for boarding school. After completing high school in 1940, I was accepted to the Law School at İstanbul University. I worked as a typist through college. After graduating I became a journalist and moved to Ankara, earning my life with my linguistic knowledge which by now was dominated by Turkish. I married my former professor, Dr.Yavuz Abadan, meanwhile a member of the parliament on May 8, 1946. For the first time, we became a family and I had a home in Turkey.

The rest is history. I’ve always wished all girls in Turkey could have opportunities like me. And, I have worked all my life towards that goal.

Turkish Philanthropy Funds doesn’t just create a temporary solution. It aims to fundamentally alter the way we approach the issue of women empowerment, triggering change that help women and girls build a better future.

Please join me in supporting the remarkable work TPF Team does in providing opportunities to women and girls in Turkey every day.

Make a tax-deductible gift today.

And, also join the online discussion by using the hashtag #thanksmom on twitter and on TPF facebook page by honoring and remembering your own mother.

We’re all in this together – it will take the commitment of you, me and others to face the big challenges of our girls in Turkey.

I look forward to seeing what we can accomplish together.

Sincerely,
Nermin Abadan-Unat

By Senay Ataselim-Yilmaz

This article was originally posted on Huffington Post.

Recently the world of philanthropy gathered for the annual conference of Global Philanthropy Forum (GPF), an organization that embodies the changing landscape of global philanthropy as it aims to inform, enable, and enhance strategic global social investing. Diaspora philanthropy was not a major discussion topic.

International development field’s concentration on measuring impact through quantitative methods caused diaspora philanthropy to be off-radar. Other players such as new philanthropic organizations and emerging countries from the “South,” which has been traditionally the receiving part, have been widely recognized. The formation of Global Philanthropy Forum in 2001 was a testament to the fact that no longer is aid assistance the main player in the field of international development and that a new generation of philanthropic organizations emerged changing the way philanthropy is done and forcing longstanding foreign aid donors to take stock. Organizations such as The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Accion International, The Acumen Fund (now Acumen) and The Echoing Green spurred by the entrepreneurial drive of a new generation, have combined business model and philanthropy to outdo for-profit investments with donations. And most recently, including at this year’s Global Philanthropy Forum conference, new bilateral donors from the emerging countries were acknowledged as new key players in international development.

Yet, there is also a third player in this changing dynamic of global philanthropy: diaspora contributions. Diaspora organizations have been a part of the discussion at the Global Philanthropy Forum as some of them were among the attendees of the conference, but the Forum needs to pay more attention to the rising impact of diaspora communities in global philanthropy. There is a continual growth in diaspora communities. The total number of international migrants has increased over the last 10 years from an estimated 150 million in 2000 to 214 million people today. Migrants would constitute the fifth most populous country in the world. These groups have business and social connections in both host and home countries, and move constantly without being connected to only one country. This enables them to be connected back home more than ever. Immigrants don’t have to move back to their home countries to make a contribution to their hometowns anymore. Kingsley Aikins in Global Diaspora Strategies Toolkit notes: “the tyranny of distance and geography is finally broken.”

We haven’t fully analyzed the increasing impact of diaspora communities back home because we have concentrated too much on evaluating the impact through numbers. It’s true that the growing numbers of remittances are remarkable. Remittances have increased exponentially: up from $132 billion in 2000 to an estimated $406 billion in 2012. These flows are expected to rise 8 percent in 2013 and 10 percent in 2014 to reach $534 billion in 2015. Yet, the real impact of diaspora contributions happens through the transfer of human and social capital. The impact of organizations such as Turkish Philanthropy Funds‘ contributions back home are beyond the amount of funds they facilitate. The missing piece from the way financial markets measure value can be filled by understanding the impact of social and human capital such as the impact of community building and knowledge transfers. The importance of these intangible benefits is in current discussions but I believe it should be upfront in the center.

The changing landscape of global philanthropy leaves us with the question of what if we cannot measure social change with the tools of the business world or with numbers. Impact assessment is finding out about the changes that work has made in people’s lives. Wouldn’t evaluating the impact of programs aimed at social change demand innovative and culturally appropriate approaches? What if numbers don’t tell us the whole story on our efforts in international development? What if measuring and accounting for everything in numbers fatally compromises sensible and effective actions on the ground?

Andrew Natsios, who once headed USAID, argues that good development practice in the field is now so tilted toward regulatory compliance and measuring accordingly that the U.S. global aid system is becoming ever more dysfunctional. Since 2001, U.S. foundations’ international giving benefited the area of health the most. In 2010, close to 41 percent of international support funded health–primarily medical research and public health. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which accounts for two out of five international grant dollars, dominated support for health, providing just over three- quarters of money invested in health. Health is the number one supported area internationally because it’s rather easier to report the decreasing polio numbers than the changing local culture towards civil initiatives. Does our concentration on measuring impact in numbers because we need to report back, curtail our goals and turn our social investments into an end instead of treating them as the means?

It looks like it does. And, the new generation of philanthropists’ emphasis on investing in social issues with a business approach triggers the focus on quantitative measurement. Because it’s easier to evaluate numbers. New philanthropists treat their giving exactly as they treat their businesses and investments. Their talk is about: “rigorous due diligence,” “scalability,” “return on capital,” and “leveraging the investment.”

“Story telling” is emerging as a new evaluation vehicle. While there isn’t a streamlined approach to compare the outcomes of these reporting, they give a better idea of the impact of the funds going to these communities. CA Endowment Fund defines storytelling as accommodating “diverse voices and perspectives, while making the most of the particular resources and ways of learning readily available in your program.” Using this approach requires a slightly different mindset. Instead of looking for ways to “prove” x or y has happened, it offers a means to create a continual feedback loop where information is flowing in to help adjust delivery of programs as time goes on. Jacqueline Novogratz in her recent letter to Acumen’s investors notes as she talks about the new path of the organization: “We’ve seen that as a world, we need to do better at measuring what we cherish, not only what we can count.”

GlobalGiving is another organization that is testing to measure impact through storytelling. The challenge GlobalGiving faces is the fact that they have hundreds of projects that address various issues in different countries with different budgets. So, measuring the impact of these projects has been an impossible task. Currently, the project is an experiment in “collecting community feedback.” They are using Sensemaker, which is an online tool that adds layers of meaning to a story and provides quantitative data, which can always be linked back to the original material, to turn these stories into data. Human Rights Watch also reports back through stories besides numbers as the organization understands that reporting on some of the issues cannot only be done with quantitative measures.

What an analysis of diaspora contributions make apparent is that numbers do not always tell the story of the full impact of our international interventions. We need to dig deeper to hear the real story and to better understand the process to fully measure impact. We need to start assessing success in a different way. And, we need to make sure our means don’t become our ends because it’s easier to measure with specific methods. Storytelling has been in discussion however the costs associated with it make it a not so attractive measurement medium. As this article in the Guardian notes “Measuring project outcomes in isolation is like trying to understand how a duck swims by measuring how far it travels in the water.” Once we highlight the importance of the processes, then we will see that there are other players whose impact are immense in the field of global philanthropy.