Turkey’s First Social Entrepreneurship Trainer's Training

Turkey Social Entrepreneurship Network, initiated with the aim of raising awareness on social entrepreneurship, improving collaborations with public and private sectors and enhancing the capacity of the sector, organized the first social entrepreneurship trainer’s training in Turkey, on July 8 - 13, at the Koç University Rumeli Feneri Campus. 27 participants from several provinces of Turkey came together at the event.

The participants were mainly trainer candidates who aim to raise social entrepreneurs that will create measurable and positive social impact while distributing their profits in accordance with the ethics on distribution and utilization, rather than solely distributing profit to its shareholders.

Participants came from Van, Gaziantep, Samsun, Kayseri, Bursa and Muğla where the project was implemented, and their ages ranged from 23 to 51 years. They took seminars on social innovation, social financing and social impact from the experts.

During the event participants attended various seminars about social entrepreneurship, citizenship, developing a business plan and a revenue model, building community, forming relations with public institutions, good practices in social entrepreneurship from Turkey and abroad and the ways to increase social impact and to find funds. The training which was based on alternative methodology and proactive participation where all the candidates were included in the process also aimed to expand this knowledge further in the cities and the surrounding region where the trainers come and to raise new social entrepreneurs.  It is targeted that the new trainers will form a group of five and will organize training sessions twice a year reaching out to 396 social entrepreneurship candidates. Trainings will take place between September-December 2019 in project cities.

You can follow the announcements regarding the trainings from the project’s website sosyalgirisimcilikagi.org and from the social media account @SosyalGirisimTR.

Turkey Social Entrepreneurship Network is initiated by Vehbi Koç Foundation in collaboration with the Koç University Social Impact Forum (KUSIF), Ashoka Foundation Turkey, Association for Innovative Solutions in Sustainable Development, TED University, the Social Innovation Initiative Association, Social Enterprise UK, and the Mozaik Foundation. The project is funded under the Grant Scheme for CSO Partnerships and Networks on Strengthening Cooperation Between Public Sector and CSOs.  This program aims to empower the cooperation between public institutions and non-governmental organizations and to improve capacity of NGOs by supporting the collaborations and networks found by NGOs which have already project experience and strong financial and administrative structure. Within the scope of this grant scheme, 10 NGOs were entitled to take approximately €4,3 million grant. Civil Society Support Program is funded by the Instrument for Pre-Accession Assistance (IPA - Period 2014) which is administed by the European Union and Turkey.