Children’s Day is celebrated throughout Turkey on April 23rd yearly. For Children’s Day this year, TPF partners with TOHUM Autism Foundation to give the gift of online education. Due to COVID-19 the students of TOHUM have faced new challenges, by donating to our COVID-19 Community Relief Fund, TPF will be able to help 78 TOHUM…
Turkish Philanthropy Funds (TPF) is proud to announce that MAGIT and Çölyak Manisa are selected as the second two recipients of the TPF COVID-19 Community Relief Fund. With the Relief Fund, TPF sees its role as being the bridge that helps our partners and our community get the help to obtain the resources they need…
“Both Ziya and I grew up in families with a deep sense of civic duty and responsibility to our communities. So giving was not something that was foreign to either of us,” says Nakiye Boyacıgiller, one of TPF’s Founders Society Members and a Board Member. Nakiye and her late husband Ziya shared the same values.…
I am a 10th-grade student at Aziz Sancar High School in Mardin. Located in the southeast of Turkey, Mardin is one of the oldest settlements in the region. For many years, the city was considered unsafe and was frequently portrayed negatively in the news. Lately, with more Turkish soap operas being filmed here, it became…
Sedef still remembers the chills she felt when she paraded into the stadium during the Opening Ceremony at 2008 Beijing Olympics. “It was one of the most unforgettable memories of my life,” she notes. “It was a dream come true.” The decision to take a break from her professional career to compete in the Olympics…
GRIT: What it takes to receive the Sena Eken Schieber Economics Award We see time and time again that grit and perseverance lead us path to success – and we this proved true again with Ipek, a scholarship recipient of the Sena Eken Schieber Economics Award currently studying at Duke University. Growing up in Antalya,…
A Colorful Story by Ahmet H Uysal It took four flights and seventeen hours to get to the North Pole from Istanbul. But to me, that is a small price to pay for impact I was hoping to make in the lives of children in the picture above. I ran against the wind for 7…
A Colorful Story by Aylin Tashman Kim As a first-generation American born and raised in Arizona, I always longed for my extended family and waited for summer when I would travel to Istanbul to see my grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. I envied my school friends who grew up close to their relatives and shared…
A Colorful Story by Nick Porcaro Nearing retirement, I had for a number of years felt the need to give back for the opportunities I have had. In 2007 a Special-Needs High School in Massachusetts had been trying to expand their campus without success due to design and budget constraints. I offered to donate my…
A Colorful Story by Nakiye A. Boyacıgiller, Ph.D. Two years ago I lost the love of my life, my husband of 39 years (sweetheart for 43), Ziya G. Boyacıgiller. When our friends at TPF asked me to write about Ziya, a founding partner and board member of the organization, I hesitated. How should I describe…