Sabancı to sponsor projects for ‘equality’

ISTANBUL

Güler Sabancı, the head of the board of trustees of the Sabancı Foundation. DHA photo

The Sabancı Foundation has announced it will give grants to nine new projects, mainly focusing on women, young people and handicapped people in order to expand participation, provide equality in social life and intensify democracy.

The foundation has given more than 7 million Turkish Liras (around $3.5 million) to 28 projects in the framework of its Social Development Grant Program since 2006, and it is set to give grants to new nine projects, the foundation said in a written statement July 3.

Supporting social development

“Our foundation’s main goal is to support social development. The most important indicator of social development is a democratic and participatory social structure that protects the fundamental rights of people from all strata and provides equality,” the head of the board of trustees, Güler Sabancı, said in the statement. She underlined the role of nongovernmental organizations in promoting such a structure.

Sabancı said they attached importance to civil society organizations that worked on involving youth in social life, women in professional life or issues affecting handicapped people in policies. “There is social development at the base of all these efforts. There is also an extension of participation, assuring equality and deepening democracy,” she added.

The general manager of the Sabancı Foundation, Zerrin Koyunsağan, said the foundation had financed 28 projects since 2006 that had touched more than 300,000 people’s lives in 72 cities. The number of the projects funded will rise to 37 with the new ones, she noted. The projects were selected from 142 applications from 44 cities in Turkey.