Tekfen Foundation

Tekfen Foundation

The Tekfen Foundation for Education, Health, Culture, Art, and Protection of Natural Resources (Tekfen Foundation) was founded in 1999 to provide a more institutional structure for socially beneficial and cultural activities and to help build a liveable future that is in harmony with nature. 

Inspired by the wisdom and foresight of Tekfen’s founding partners and celebrating its 20th anniversary in 2019, Tekfen Foundation allocates significant resources for the support both of education (Turkey’s most vital need) and of endeavours in culture and art (among the most important of indicators of any society’s level of development) and has also carried out countless projects in these areas. Tekfen Foundation was officially recognised as a “public service corporation” in 2004.

Education

Tekfen Foundation provides unconditional educational grants to successful but financially needy students studying in Turkey and also to the children of Tekfen personnel who are high school or undergraduate university students in order to help support their education. To date, close to 3,000 students have graduated with the help of Tekfen Foundation. Every year the foundation provides scholarships to 600 students. In order that its scholarship recipients may embark upon their careers with a better-informed awareness of what it is that they want to do, the foundation also arranges mentoring for them at Tekfen Group companies.

By tradition, Tekfen Foundation hosts a “Tekfen Scholarship Recipients Gathering” every year to give students a chance to become better acquainted with Tekfen and to receive guidance on matters of concern to their future.

In 2018, Tekfen Foundation forged another link in the chain of its support for education by signing a donation agreement with Darüşşafaka. Established in 1863, Darüşşafaka is Turkey’s oldest non-governmental educational institution. Under the agreement, Tekfen Foundation is covering all of the educational expenses of 24 students enrolled in Darüşşafaka’s middle school division for a period of four years each. Tekfen also keeps a close watch on each student’s progress, visits them, and serves as their host at Tekfen events.

Having joined the Education Reform Initiative (ERG) in 2017 as a corporate sponsor, Tekfen Foundation continued to support the initiative’s activities in 2019. ERG is an independent and not-for-profit organisation whose aim is to come up with common-sense ways to contribute to a systemic transformation of education for the benefit of children and social development through sound evidence, constructive dialogue, and stakeholder engagement.

Tekfen Foundation also supports the Boğaziçi University Scientific Research Fund. A “Tekfen Foundation Academic Research Fund” set up within the Boğaziçi University Foundation is intended to generate earnings that will be used to help finance Boğaziçi University Scientific Research projects which have been identified by the Boğaziçi University Scientific Research Projects Commission.

Tekfen Philharmonic

The Tekfen Philharmonic Orchestra is a prominent member of Turkey’s cultural and artistic scene. Originally founded in 1992 as a chamber group whose members came from eleven Black Sea countries, the ensemble has since grown into a symphonic orchestra that now brings together musicians from 23 countries in the Black Sea, Caspian Sea, and Eastern Mediterranean regions. A bespoke repertoire of music that includes instruments that are indigenous to the countries that its artists call home adds unique value to this orchestra as a cultural mosaic.

In 2019, the Tekfen Philharmonic added another prestigious feather to its cap when it was chosen by the İstanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts (İKSV) to be the orchestra for the opening concerts at the 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022 İstanbul Music Festivals.

It has become a fall tradition for the Tekfen Philharmonic to give concerts intended to instill a love of classical music among youngsters, on which occasions the orchestra’s name is changed to “Tekfen Philhar-Mini”. The orchestra entertaines its young audience with colourful puppets, stories, and a splendid stage performance as it took them on a magical tour through the world of classical music.

Celebrating its 20th anniversary in 2019, Tekfen Foundation added to its support for classical music with the introduction of a music scholarship programme. The programme, whose aim is to help train talented musicians not just for the Tekfen Philharmonic but also for all orchestras in Turkey, provides students who want to pursue a career as a professional orchestra musician with the opportunity to continue their undergraduate education abroad.

Publications

Tekfen Foundation publishes works which  document the historical, cultural, and natural riches of Turkey while also shedding light on important issues associated with them. Ziyaret Tepe: Exploring the Anatolian frontier of the Assyrian Empire, Özgürlük Notaları (the story of Turkey’s national anthem), Flowers of Anatolia (a record and description of Anatolia’s extraordinary biodiversity), and its continuation Birds of Anatolia are the foundation’s publications.

Sustainable Development

In the aftermath of the mining disaster which occurred in 2014 in the town of Soma in western Turkey and which resulted in the deaths of 301 miners, the Tekfen Foundation Microcredit Branch opened its doors later the same year under the auspices of the Turkey Grameen Microfinance Programme (TİSVA) with the mission of creating alternative sources of income for local women. In 2017, Tekfen Foundation continued its efforts along these lines by entering yet into another agreement with TİSVA, under which an existing branch in Mersin was included in the same programme. As of end-2019, a total of 2,132 women (1,071 in Soma and 1,051 in Mersin) were allocated microfinancing to support their families.

The “Women Farmers’ Loan” project, launched by Tekfen Foundation in collaboration with TİSVA and Toros Agri, to support women entrepreneurs aspiring to work in agriculture, continued to expand in 2022. With the belief that women’s active participation in business is crucial to the family economy, rural development and ultimately a sustainable society, the project was launched in the Aegean region and later expanded to the Western Mediterranean coastal area. 159 low-income women farmers benefited from the project by receiving loans. The social impact analysis, carried out during the first year of the project, showed that every lira invested in the project created TRY6.47 worth of social return on investment.

In addition to empowering women, the project helps idle arable lands to be used in agriculture. The Women Farmers’ Loan won the 2022 Sustainable Business Awards’ “B2NGO Cooperation” category. The project was also presented as a case study in the “Empowering Women for Climate Resilience” panel of the UN Climate Change Conference in November 2022 in Egypt.