Lend a Hand and Let's Grow Together

Dear donor

We completed the previous season of mentorship project on June 5^th and are getting ready for our 6^th  year. All 21 CYDD branches that took part in the project this year celebrated the year end with a little party that brought together the mentors, the students and the CYDD branch members.

Total number of 180 mentor- menti pairs profited from the project this year and we had professionals from Dow Chemical and professors from major Istanbul Universities joining the project as mentors.

For the 6^th year we plan to have at least 200 pairs and increase the number of CYDD branches to 28. The 7 new branches will be determined from among  Beylikdüzü, Büyükçekmece, Gaziosmanpasa, Urla, Usak,  Balkesir, Samsun, Ankara, Denizli, Sinop, Gaziantep and Van branches. We will share with you the new partnering branches in our next report.

The goal of our 6^th year will be to carry the project to new far away towns like Van and Gaziantep and to increase the percentage of girl students profiting from the project. We need to organize mentor and menti trainings in these new towns and this means we need your support as always.

We thank you for believing in our project..

Best regards,

As we are approaching the end of our 5th year in the program, we are enriching our activities for our menti students. The students who have meetings with their mentors regularly are also taking part in various activities offered by volunteer sponsors.

Four activities were scheduled for May and attendance was high;

-Oracle (sponsor company providing mentors for the project and meeting locations for trainings) gave free “Excel” trainings to 10 menti.

-Anadolu Isuzu employees hosted 20 menti students in their Gebze Bus and Truck factory (engineering students were given priority) for a day and Isuzu management gave career tips on engineering and human resources management.

-10 menti (students of health sciences and chemistry were given priority) were invited to Bilim Ilaç (one of the leading local pharmaceutical companies) for a day where they had a chance to learn about the pharmaceutical sector and learned about the work experience of employes. Each student was given a mentor from the company.

-A full day seminar was given by educators Buket Tunakan and Pnar Demircan on personal development and how to start work life (interview techniques, preparing CV’s, etc.)

Furthermore Istanbul menti students have been getting free English lessons from Üsküdar American Lycee students on a one-to-one basis. Each menti is coupled with an ÜAL student and they meet regularly in a place of their own choice. The protocol made with school management enables students to fulfill their social responsibility projects and our menti to improve their English language skills.

This year these activities could only be designed for our Istanbul menti students and we do need your support to extend these activities to the other cities where our project accepts students.

With your support we hope to have a stronger program next school year..

We thank you all.