Today is 23 April National Sovereignty and Children’s Day – one of the most exciting and happy days for our nation. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of our Republic, dedicated the very day that the Turkish Grand National Assembly was established to children and this is a significant example of his vision. It is also a very valuable to us, because just as the Assembly laid the foundations of our Republic, children shape the world and steer the future.

To understand what the world will be like in the future, we need to look at today’s children. What they do, what they are interested in, what games mean to them… These indicate how the world will be like tomorrow. And the future comes in a hurry.

Today’s children cannot imagine a world without the concepts, technologies and devices that previous generations could not even dream of. They grow up and develop with technology. Their perspectives, systems of thought, approaches are fed by the infinite opportunities of technology, especially the digital technology. That is why they can cross borders a lot more easily. When the opportunities of digitalization are combined with their powerful imagination, great works and inventions emerge. Writing codes, developing robots, inventing things, creating their own online media are natural parts of their lives.

As adults, our responsibility is to support such conscious and productive children. That is why I am very enthusiastic and proud of our projects aiming to help children confidently prepare for the future. For instance, our employees support the robotics and mechatronics initiatives at Darüşşafaka High School and encourage young students to think more innovatively. We have provided voluntary engineering support to Darüşşafaka Robotics Club, namely Sultans of Turkey, for a robot that won the FRC Robotics Competition in the USA. In addition, our engineers at Siemens Turkey give coding trainings to the female students at Darüşşafaka and support them in their career paths as voluntary mentors.

Encouraging more female students to study engineering is another initiative that we adopt and put great emphasis on. With the Female Engineers Project held in cooperation with our Diversity Council and Turkish Education Foundation (TEV), our female engineers offer mentoring to young female engineering students to support their theoretical knowledge with experience and practice.

We attach great importance to the projects for the children and young individuals, because we know that we need to take responsibility for all children to build a better world. We need to support them and help especially those with fewer means to confidently preparefor the future. I hope such initiatives continue in a larger scale not only at Siemens Turkey, but also in the business world and throughout the country.

Happy 23 April National Sovereignty and Children’s Day to all children!

Today is March 8th, International Women’s Day.

After taking a look at last year’s blog post on International Women’s Day, I regret to see that the major problems I mentioned a year ago still continue, even in an augmented manner. Although society’s awareness on “violence against women” is increasing, we still have a long way to go. Today, half of our 70-million population are women. Naturally, it is impossible for a society to improve by developing only one half and neglecting the other. Especially if the neglected half is the most important actor in raising the children, i.e. our future, such improvement becomes even harder. Therefore, we need to take steps that truly create value and benefit. And we need to do it not only as individuals, but also as corporations.

Sustainability is a key component that makes Siemens what it is. We attach great importance to benefiting from innovative ideas created through diverse cultures and mindsets in all of our corporate principles and operations. Today, in parallel with the extraordinary increase in the means of communication, we are facing more severe problems that need to be solved. One of the problems to be solved is finding ways to expand and reinforce women representation in the business world. We, as Siemens Turkey, are proud to have an active “Diversity Council” that shares the same goal. We have also been one of the first companies to sign the “Business Against Domestic Violence Policy Development and Implementation Guide” in Turkey. But is that enough? Of course not. We pay attention to every initiative in this regard and we will continue our efforts to create a difference.

On this year’s March 8th we wanted to make an announcement that is really meaningful to us. As a technology and engineering company, we attach great importance to increasing the number of female engineers. Therefore, we are launching a scholarship program with Turkish Education Foundation (TEV), with whom we have cooperated in various projects so far. Within the scope of this program, we make donations to meet year-long educational expenses of young women studying engineering to get a BSc or MSc degree. Success should be supported and we are determined to contribute to increasing the number of successful female engineers.

International Women’s Day is a celebration of women’s labor, freedom, and the value they generate for life itself. We are more than happy to celebrate this day with an announcement that focuses on social contribution. Happy International Women’s Day!

“We believe that it’s every child’s right to access preschool education” says Nalan Yalçın, General Manager of AÇEV, Mother Child Education Foundation.

AÇEV piloted an intensive pre-school program to provide critical early childhood education for Syrian refugee children in last summer. We as Siemens Turkey are proud to support such a valuable project of AÇEV. Following the program, an extensive monitoring and evaluation was conducted and the results revealed that kids benefited from this program showed a remarkable improvement which proved it ‘successful’. Some of this children have never seen their parents home back in Syria. Now they are even more ready for their ordinary school education.

This has been a valuable example to develop further education programs for refugee children. This video talks for itself!

Darüşşafaka High Advisory Board gathered on September 21^st to discuss the future opportunities for Darüşşafaka Society.

In addition to my personal commitment to this educational institution, Siemens Turkey also proudly supports Darüşşafaka, which has offered a bright future to thousands of students since its establishment, with the strength and trust built in 150 years.

I sincerely hope we will have many other good examples in education like Darüşşafaka.