In the wake of a licensing and corporate analysis that stretches out for many years, the world’s food banking network Global FoodBanking Network this month announced that its member Temel Ihtiyac Dernegi (TIDER - Basic Needs Association) will in this area, carry the status of being officially one of Turkey’s umbrella organizations and will help for it to develop to international food banking standards and given the guarantee to benefit from global opportunities.

We have always been very proud of its existence, with its constant battle to prevent poverty and waste, the path of our CSO, Basic Needs Association, has always crossed one with the world’s biggest food banking network, the Global FoodBanking Network (GFN) which with its help, supports over 7 million needy people. GFN’s Chairman, Bob Forney started visiting Turkey during the establishment of TIDER. In order to remind you, I will give you the insight again: while I was managing at a food retailer, the member of parliament at the time, Aziz Akgul had brought out a legislation in 2004 regarding food banking and with this, I received an invitation to partner up with Metro (retail). The event held at Hyatt hotel saw many participants from many food and food retailing firms.

I was enlightened on the concept of food banking at this dinner, which was held in honor of the Global FoodBanking Network Chairman, Bob Forney. In the end, we established the Food Banking Association with 8 food firms and their representatives. From the very beginning, we always held our position as the umbrella organization for Food Banking. In order to have transparency, impartiality and sustainability from a social cooperation perspective, we had support from the member of parliament who introduced the legislation along with many companies. Later on, in 2014, due to a new configuration, we changed our name, our code of conduct and our model. We established the ‘‘while giving fish, teach how to catch fish’ model. We started to apply our waste prevention model too. Over the 8 years, we covered a lot of distance.

Articles I have written about TIDER

For further information regarding TIDER, I would like to share with you the previous articles I wrote:

http://serhansuzer.com/en/the-soma-disaster-and-our-first-development-project

http://www.serhansuzer.com/tr/yoksullukla-mucadelede-ideal-bir-model-destek-projesi

http://serhansuzer.com/en/a-single-salve-for-three-wounds-support-project-1

http://serhansuzer.com/en/a-single-salve-for-three-wounds-support-project-2

http://serhansuzer.com/en/a-single-salve-for-three-wounds-support-project-3

http://serhansuzer.com/en/basic-needs-association-understanding-tider

 

GFN’s qualities

From day one, our paths have always crossed with GFN. They came to visit us in Turkey. Infact, they conducted one of their meetings in Turkey. I can share the below facts with you regarding GFN:

• GFN has 791 food banks in 30 countries
• 89% of the products they distribute are made up of food and drink. The remaining 11% is made up of hygiene and textile products
• They distinguish their food products separately, as packaged and as healthy.  We can consider 71% of it as nutritional products
• Of the 791 food banks, only 13 actually purchase products
• 16 food banks have integrated a healthy diet educational program
• On average, in a year, one person receives 57kilo worth of products
• One meal is calculated as 2.5kilo

 

Gaining acceleration once winning the historical innovation award

Last year, we won the first ever Global Foodbanking Network Innovation Award, held at a first-time event. I have written 2 articles about this which I’d like to share with you:

http://serhansuzer.com/en/on-the-road-to-becoming-a-global-cso-civil-society-organisation-the-big-award-goes-to-tider

http://serhansuzer.com/en/the-adventure-and-celebrations-following-the-big-prize

Winning this award was an immense success in the Turkish CSO circle. Think about it, during a time where there were negative perceptions about Turkey, especially with a model outside of food banking, with our human resource model (Support HR), we won the award without even having full membership status with GFN. With over 70 food banking professional, and 7 finalists, we were the ones chosen. Not only did we win the first GFN innovation award, we also made history and strengthened our relationship.

 As a result, after we won the award, both GFN and TIDER got together and agreed that “we need to get the ball rolling for the full membership”. With a mutual understanding, we acted together with a series of thick documentation and corporate position analysis, and as a result, this month they conveyed the good news to us.

 

The benefits of full membership and access to global opportunities

Now we are officially a full member of GFN. And to top it off, we managed this with the umbrella organization of Turkey status. We were able to strengthen our position as the umbrella organization of food banking in Turkey with this international accreditation. If a food bank in our country wants to operate on an international standard level, they must be a member of us and operate according to the standards we have set.

 

 

 

As a result, after we won the award, both GFN and TIDER got together and agreed that “we need to get the ball rolling for the full membership”. With a mutual understanding, we acted together with a series of thick documentation and corporate position analysis, and as a result, this month they conveyed the good news to us.

 

The benefits of full membership and access to global opportunities

Now we are officially a full member of GFN. And to top it off, we managed this with the umbrella organization of Turkey status. We were able to strengthen our position as the umbrella organization of food banking in Turkey with this international accreditation. If a food bank in our country wants to operate on an international standard level, they must be a member of us and operate according to the standards we have set.

 

 

In order to elaborate on the topic, within the Global FoodBanking Network membership, TIDER will benefit from all of the opportunities; it can gain access from global firms which donate products to food banks, will also have access to all the educational materials regarding GFN’s food banking, can exchange details and share information with other worldwide food banks and can apply to the open grant programs.

Those that join the TIDER network as food banks and companies will also benefit from all of that provided by GFN.

 

The honor of being amongst the leaders of ideas

The best way to relay my personal feelings are like this: we have been continually developing our facilities since 2010 and as a result, as an umbrella organization in Turkey, we received our official member certificate to the Global FoodBanking Network (GFN) which has members from continents across the world, in which we are pleased and honored to gain the rights to. By having the Global FoodBanking Networking membership and then winning the innovation award last year, we have entered the idea pool amongst the other food banks in the world. Now our most important goal is, with the strength and support of GFN, we aim to fight poverty and prevent waste with tangible and creative solutions and within the social cooperation of the public, CSO and private sector in our country, enable a steady foundation of partnership and help reach the highest of standards.

As an umbrella organization in Turkey, we cordially invite those in civil society organizations who would like to help benefit or provide benefit to food banking, or otherwise share their experience or donate products of necessity to the TIDER network.

If you don’t know of TIDER and don’t have time to read the above articles about TIDER, here is a summary:

 

ABOUT TIDER

Basic Needs Association (TIDER), is a food bank which adopts a wide capacity view to fight against poverty and against waste with a holistic model, and as a civil society organization, has substantial tangible solutions. With the Support Markets it has established, the consumable products, cleaning products and clothes it has rescued from being waste is shared amongst families living below the poverty line. Being awarded for its authentic and original model by the Global Foodbanking Network, it also helps to find work for family members who want to work or otherwise help those who’d like to start their own businesses; and most importantly help with other problems they live through with the help of other CSO’s and civil organizations to make permanent changes.

With the problems that poverty brings, TIDER has recognized that delivering just basic needs is not enough and that expanding the food banking model in Turkey and by means to the rest of the world needs further action. With this goal in view, it developed the Support Cloud platform, which brings together member food banks and companies that donate products, which enables the reduction to waste and in-turn generates full scale solutions. On the other hand, it has developed another form of software which is called Support HR platform, which helps those looking for a job to get in contact with employment agencies, predominantly for blue collar workers.

With this opportunity I’d like to say that this is my last article for the month and that I will be taking a break in August. I wish all my readers a happy holiday season and wish the best to all those who will be celebrating Qurban Eid. See you all in September.

 

Take care…

 

 

Tag: sosyal sorumluluk