I had previously published the first and second ‘frequently asked questions’ series in the past year, but since then and that time, a lot more have come about. I am publishing another series of these that have come through various channels, either fr om comments on my blog, via social media, sometimes asked to me personally and also via email.
 

21. How can I contribute to Tider (Basic Needs Association)?

You can support us in whichever way your situation can assist. I have summarized them below:

 

a) Cash Donation

In order to sustain their lives, we provide the most tangible and solid support of the basic goods to those in need, for children who don’t have mothers or fathers, your donations can give them hope for the future and help us in our battle with poverty. Along with this, you can be an ongoing contributor and donate a chosen amount each month. Your donations will be converted into goods on the shelves of the Support Market such as basic staples, cleaning and clothing items and with the support of HR, provide employment to disadvantaged families. You can contact Tider for cash donations, deposit money into the below account or visit and either make a donation or choose to be an ongoing supporter of donation.

 

GARANTI BANK TL ACCOUNT

Branch: Maltepe (205)

Account No: 6293567

TR74 0006 2000 2050 0006 2935 67

 

b) Goods Relief Donation

With this method, we can provide families with goods that you have too much of, or that are seasonal, may be close to its ‘use by date’ or have some packaging faults which you cannot use or sell any longer, and instead make an effective social contribution. In any case, in order to destruct these goods would cost alot more. However, if you donate these, you avoid paying the destruction cost and infact can claim the production costs 100% against tax. During destruction of these goods, you can potentially harm the ecologic system due to the gases produced during termination. By donating these instead, you can reduce your carbon footprint. At the same time you can avoid waste and help with the battle against poverty and in turn help benefit thousands of people and fulfil your corporate social responsibilities.

 

What is the process for Goods Relief Donation?

• you can either send or we can pickup the goods ready for donation
• arrange the cost consideration and dispatch a waybill
• once your products reach our Support Market, it is our responsibility to protect your brand and its value
• we will provide you with an invoice that you can use to claim tax
• you can be sure that your donation has gone to the right place. For this we will provide you with ongoing reports. By this, you can see which of your products have gone to which family etc.
• in order to increase our mutual effect, we can announce a partnership

 

c) Volunteering

If you would like to help us with our battle with poverty and unemployment, the best way is to become a Tider volunteer to contribute whole heartedly. You can do this either individually or on behalf of your firm.

• What you can do as a Tider volunteer:
• stack shelves, barcode items, control the depo at the Support Market
• tell your friends about Tider, give out our brochures, follow and share our posts via social media
• personally meet the families we make donations to; get to know them and help find an appropriate job for them, or come and hangout with us at the Support Market and meet the families
• help us assist families with job interviews; connect them with employers and provide us with up dates regarding this
• If you have the experience, you can support by providing the necessary training, strengthening and other educational support
• having a volunteers day at the company you work at, and come to visit and support us as a team

 

As a corporate volunteer, what can you do for Tider?

• have food and clothing donation boxes at your workplace for people to donate for our Support Market
• organising a Support Market volunteer day and contributing with your work team
• take a role in mentoring, with your corporate experience and knowledge

 

d) Company Sponsorship

Companies can support Tider by taking on its operational costs. Based on their own desire, they can choose to cover the costs either by cash donation or take on the role themselves and cover the cost as a sponsor.

• Examples of the costs a sponsor can cover:
• expenses for our personnel
• contribute towards advertising and communication expenses
• cover expenses for the Tider Childrens Academy
• help assist with the purchase of main fixtures for new opening Support Markets

 

22. How can we setup a system to provide Solar energy for a 100 people residential area?

In Turkey, every household uses up to 3MWh electricity and if in each household there is a minimum of 4 people, there will be a consumption of 75MWh in 25 households. This will lead to a need for a 40-50kWp solar energy system and for this we’d need an area of at least 900-1.200m2.

 

23. I live in an apartment block in Istanbul. Can we setup a Solar energy system on the roof or garden of our building?

Structurally apartment buildings are a little bit complicated. However, if you can convince all your neighbours, then off course you can benefit fr om this without realising it. We actually receieve more than enough energy fr om the sun God provides us, which we need to make use of.

If we think about it, the new trend in energy is to produce and consume in the same place (smart networks will eventually take over gigantic networks), therefore its logical to consume energy fr om places closest to us. And for this, gardens or rooptops are the best solutions.

An affordable, and location based study needs to be conducted and of course, banks need to be involved in order to offer personal credit advantages to people who want to do this. This will all happen later on. In actual fact, instead of paying for electricity bills, you'll be paying off the credit loan and after many years (Istanbul 9 years, Mersin 6 years), you'll be using electricity for free.

 

24. Can Turkey be the centre of renewable energy?

This is possible. We haven't missed that train yet. We can actually say the renewable energy sector has just started. But in 5 years time, it might be late. When you look at our geography and history, we actually have potential to be the centre. And of course, the geography and history is not enough. It is only helpful when technology and people come into play.

In actual fact, we have no problem with people sources in our country. We have some real good engineers and professionals. If we can put an idea out, with a vision of world scale, and correct systems, these professionals can focus on constantly improve themselves.

Personally, my two most important missions are, renewable energy and to enable a sustainable concept that can quickly spread around the world, to essentially bring out a brand fr om our geogrpahy. If we succeed in doing this, it may open doors of some people and firms who also have potential here. I believe renewable energy can cover all the energy requirements of Turkeys potential. Infact, the suns energy is enough for us. As long as we have the right vision to provide these studies. Even if we do this, we will go beyond being the centre, we will become a country that for the first time, sets the trend for world energy.

 

25. I want to ask you a question like you are anybody. Being in this much wealth, what is the definition of poverty for you? (you can either respond in a worldy or otherworldly way), but please dont get my question wrong.

Wealth and poverty are relative definitions. For who and what is wealth and poverty? Is this wealth you talk of financial or spiritual? The answer to these can change fr om person to person.

Actually my worldly and otherworldly views complete each other. Here’s how:

Everyone comes to the world in some way. No one has the choice of choosing their family, country, spoken language and infact name. You can be born into a rich or poor family, parents that get along well or divorced, or into a family that constantly travels and has global views or grow into a local family. None of these are our choices. The important thing here is wh ere you started your life when you were born and the difference of wh ere you are when you pass away. If you have all your life added value, improved and developed yourself, contributed to humanity, to your family and environments, then it means you are a positive person. And we shouldnt just perceive this as financially. Some are successful businessmen, some are successful CSO directors, some successful writers and some are fantastic mothers bringing up good children. And this is whats important. If you have become a positive and good person, and have contributed to humanity and added to your life wh ere you started, then it doesnt matter which world you’re in, it means you are in a good place.

 

26. I always see girls around you. Enjoy it, God gave you money too, theres no one holding you back?

Dont worry theres so many people in Turkey to handle and block. This is how our country runs unfortunately. If someone does something good or works hard, there will be people who try to imitate them or do anything possible to stop them in their tracks and even overthrow them.

And here we are trying to reach our targets by doing everything we possibly can. No matter what, we continue on our path.

Of course, there are two logic mistakes here. Firstly, the girls you see in my social media or on my blog are either my work friends, volunteer friends fr om the club or either my relatives. For whatever reason, when they see you with someone fr om the opposite sex, they immediately think you are in a relationship. This is actually a lame hypothesis. People who have thoughts like this are generally people who didnt grow up with feelings of love fr om their childhood. Thats why they misunderstand when opposite sexes come together.

Secondly, i have been doing my own work for the past 5.5 years. At the beginning, I borrowed money fr om my father, but now I progress independently. It means I am providing my own finance. And I am paying my father back. So that's why I see the comments about being blessed by God with money as an injustice.

 

There are some things I’d like you to know:

a)  Men and women complete each other in all spaces. Thats why I try and balance this men and women thing in all my projects. For example, wh ere women show less interest in, for example, engineering, I try and increase women in these areas. We developed our interim program based on this. I am proud of the men and women equality programs we have formed at work.

b)  I also wrote about this in the Bozcaada blog http://serhansuzer.com/tr/kosu-bahane-bozcaada-sahane. The women volunteers we have in our club society trample the mens amount. We argued the reasons of this amongst ourselves. The result was:

Our club society Tider, provides food for those in need, cleanliness and clothes to meet the basic needs of people in need. And this brings out the motherly feelings at front. That’s why, as women are more sensitive and more heartfelt, supporting us like this enables a situation like this. Infact, one of our volunteers used another club society as an example: For example, there are more male volunteers in Akut. Although the General Secretary is a woman (who we adore), as far as their missions is concerned, they demand having more male volunteers there.

c)  As principle, I dont share things about my social life on social media or on my blog. In the future, in this meaning the only woman you see this about, will be my life partner.

 

27.​ You can find my CV attached. I’m looking for work. Can you help me?

Dont make your job applications to me directly. I am now deleting emails fr om people who send their CV directly to me as we should all be professional enough to know not to send a CV directly to a CEO.

Anyone who wants to make an application, can apply directly to the HR department. The related emails to this matter are listed below:

info@tider.org

ik@eko.group

hr@eko.re

info@ekocc.com

cv@vodasoft.com.tr

info@moka.com

 

28. Winning the Global FoodBanking Network Innovation Award as Tider in March, at that point, how did you stand out fr om the rest?

This award was amongst 8 different country projects some being England, Singapore, Columbia and Argentina, and over 70 food bank professionals voted for us, which meant we got the most votes and they saw our HR module and support HR worthy of this award. This is important progress and a message that our social assistance system is on its way to change. And this change requires sustainability. Thats why they approved the Human Resource project. The food banks abroad are getting in touch with us to obtain further information. It really is a proud feeling for a CSO. We are able to carry out a system we implemented.

 

29. What are your goals in the renewable energy sector?

We are always configuring our goals around a successful international framework. We see ourselves as not only solar energy specialists but at the same time, producers of technology. Amongst our upcoming goals, we want to increase our authority in our Ar-Ge studies, to the highest level. Our vision, investments and studies are all being guided in this way. We are aiming to sign on contracts that will bring some sound by EkoRE into the renewable energy area. We are not going to be doing this only by development of technology alone, but by implementing new working models. We really want to develop and bring out a world brand for Turkey.

 

30. What is the most important item for the Solar energy sectory right now? Can you comment about your main problems? How can you solve these problems?

 

The main problem of this sector is not doing projects. Beyond the difficulties faced during the licensing and project development period, the solar energy sector has not received the support required. Besides this, the mechanisms put in place haven't been in operation. For example, in 2013 the first licensing of the 600MW that was started, didn't reach success, the licences obtained were not carried out due to financial closures. This also negatively impacted the projects that were brought out last year including the 1 GW (1.000MW) project which accelerated on its own without a licence. Another category developed in the name of YEKA specifically for Turkey. The GES YEKA plan, which was made for December last year, was delayed twice. We will see altogether whether or not Kalyon-Hanwha consortium, who won the legal rights to manage the project, can overcome it.

As a result, we only have one unlicensed project in our hands and the sector has come to a halt. Last year in China, the 23 GW (23.000 MW) project was done, and if we think about the least sunny region with the lowest radiation being Karadeniz, and the established capacity in Germany reaching 40 GW, Turkey has many more roads ahead. We are hoping the authorities of the Solar Energy sector will open up all the roads and possibilities.

 

 

 

 

 

Tag: sosyal sorumluluk