Happy Belated 19 Mayıs, the Commemoration of Atatürk, Youth and Sports Day!

Here is an opportunity to increase the impact of your donations for 145,000 children diagnosed with Autism in Turkey. Donors Mete and Burcu Tuncel are matching donations up to $10,000 until April 2nd. You can either give the gift of special education to children with autism, where the need is in thousands or help build an elevator in a school for autistic and mentally disabled children in Eskisehir. Act today!

What an exciting day we had! TPF wanted to celebrate its birthday by giving out gifts, so we decided to match donations up to $5,000. Boy, did our donors respond! We were flooded with generous gifts, and even two special donations to increase the matching gift amount to $15,000. We closed the day with $27,125 to give away in grants.

Forward this message to a friend January 15, 2013 Your insight on what’s new at TPF! 2013: A Year for Gender Equality and Education The results are in! We asked you to give us your opinion on what programs we should prioritize in 2013 to have a positive impact on Turkey and you’ve responded! Read on to hear our forecast for the year ahead based on your top results! IRA Charity Rollover is Back As part of the “fiscal cliff” deal, Congress has resurrected a popular tax-law provision, known as the “IRA charitable rollover,”. The deadline to take advantage of this one-time charitable giving opportunity is January 31, 2013! Read more in our Philanthrolog. Closing the Gender Gap On Jan. 2, thirteen powerful decision makers in Turkey met over a new year’s lunch. Not one of them was a woman. “Half the population has not even one voice over a lunch of 13.” The disproportionate male/female ratio in [...]

Forward this message to a friend December 12, 2012 Have a wonderful holiday season! Tax Smart Year-End Giving Scrambling to make your charity gifts by year’s end, in case lawmakers cap the charitable tax deduction in 2013? Though next year’s tax code is still uncertain, if you realized significant income (including capital gain) in 2012, an offsetting charitable contribution can mitigate some of your tax burden. A gift to a donor-advised fund at TPF now can give you the highest deduction allowed by law for 2012 while allowing you to push decisions about charitable gifts to specific causes into the future. Read more!  Investing in Children November 20th was Universal Children’s Day - an entire day to commemorate the beauty of youth!  Toys, sweets and bright colors are what most of us think about when we think about children. Unfortunately, this is not the reality for approximately 211 million children around the world. For them, their days start [...]

This Thanksgiving, we are grateful for our community’s generosity and continued confidence in TPF. In this spirit, we wish you and yours a healthy, happy Thanksgiving celebration and weekend.

Today marks the one year anniversary of the Van Earthquake. Twelve months ago, Van was in shambles. But with each passing day, Van improves as new projects to rebuild are launched.

Natural disasters do not only destroy buildings, roads and infrastructure, they upend human life, forcing many to suffer post-traumatic stress. That is what happened in Van last October. Our partners are making enormous strides in helping not only the physical well-being of the victims of the 2011 earthquake, but also the emotional. Managing post-traumatic stress is extremely challenging but with the help of hardworking TPF partners, we are making it a group effort. Read on to learn about The Van Art Project’s groundbreaking moment during their art therapy workshop, the newly built Van Post-Trauma Family Counseling Center of ACEV and how TEGV and TPF are keeping students’ minds occupied with the brand new extracurricular activity building.

On July 9, TPF, along with Hisar Anadolu Destek Dernegi (HADD) and The Bootstrap Project hosted an event featuring the kilim workshops in Van. Enver Ozkahraman, the workshop’s founder and Servet Harunoglu, HADD’s leader joined two of the girls enrolled in these workshops, Fatma and Seden, on a panel about the workshops and their impacts. HADD has been supporting the Van kilim workshops. And the impact has been significant.

Yes She Can! Project launches TPF’s efforts to close Turkey’s gender gap continues with the launch of the Yes She Can! Project on June 15, 2012. Working with Partners for a New Beginning (PNB), TPF will collaborate with Turkish telecommunications giant Turkcell and Cagdas Yasami Destekleme Dernegi to connect Turkish schoolgirls between the ages of 12-21 to professional women in the United States for a mentorship program. PNB is an initiative of the Aspen Institute focused on promoting economic development, growth and progress in emerging markets. The Yes She Can! Project, as this blog post notes, strives to contribute to Turkey’s growth and development by increasing the number of Turkish girls graduating high school to pursue a college education and eventually entering the Turkish workforce. The program will start with 8 girls and 8 women. Read more Van and the City It’s a dream come true for a handful of [...]

Along with spring, good news arrived in the earthquake devastated city of Van. Two new buildings opened their doors to the city’s residents at the end of April. TPF partners Anne Cocuk Egitim Vakfi (ACEV) and Cagdas Yasami Destekleme Dernegi (CYDD) made these possible. TPF’s $50,000 grant supported ACEV with the construction of a family rehabilitation center in Hüsrevpaşa Container City. It is a 280 square meter prefabricated facility with space for counseling groups and children. This facility is expected to serve 6,000 people through training programs, psychiatric care and children’s programs. Not far away, with a $50,000 grant from TPF, CYDD helped Van’s Yuzuncu Yil University put up a prefabricated building for educational activities on campus. With 10 classrooms and a canteen, this building will enable 6,000 students to resume learning – and slowly put Van back in a normal routine.

TPF was honored with the “Award for Excellence in Charity” at the 32nd annual Turkish American Convention dinner in Washington on April 14, 2012. The convention, held at the Washington Plaza Hotel, focused on “Think Globally, Act Locally.” On April 12, TPF’s COO Senay Ataselim addressed the conference on charitable fundraising, emphasizing TPF’s philosophy that giving is about community. Indeed that was the message that TPF had upon accepting the award, noting that “one of the reasons Haldun Bey started the organization was to empower individuals to get behind the causes they believed in and create movements of their own.

As education dominated headlines in Turkey, TPF spent time looking at the reform bill that passed in the Turkish Grand National Assembly by a vote of 295 to 91. Turkish President Abdullah Gul signed it into law on April 10. But what does that mean? TPF held a town hall video chat with four experts on the subject.

When the World Economic Forum released its report on Gender Equality at the end of January, TPF sprung into action. Turkey ranked 122 out of 135 countries. As the 16th largest economy in the world and growing, that’s shocking. For six weeks, TPF ran the “Empowering Turkish Girls” campaign.