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United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs Sustainable Development

Akbank Goodwill of The City 2020

Akbank (
Private sector
)
#SDGAction33565
    Description
    Intro

    'Goodwill of The City' is an Akbank initiative started at 2015 to encourage university students to take part in social responsibility projects organized in collaboration with Turkey’s leading NGOs, therefore create social impact and produce social benefit for the community. Every year, Akbank invites university students from all over Turkey to be a volunteer in social responsibility projects organized in cooperation with various Non-Governmental Organizations and thereafter, to be a guest of Akbank in the Concert. The initiative expands its impact each year by adding new NGOs and volunteers and included 6000 students engaged with 16 NGOs in 2020

    Implementation of the Project/Activity

    The sixth edition of 'Goodwill of The City’ Project was held totally online between October and December 2020 due to pandemic restrictions. As the physical engagement was not possible, 2020 practice was decided to focus on creating awareness amongst university students about volunteering, its long-term impacts, how they can be volunteer for an issue, which NGO works in which area, how they can change the society in collaboration with NGOs and how they can realize and respond SDGs via online meetings and activities. The number of collaborating NGOs were increased to 16 and the areas they operate was varying from environment protection to animal sheltering, from disabled children to inpatient children, from deaf to the sheltered elders, from community volunteers to the ones involved in searching, assisting and rescuing all who require aid in mountain or other nature-related accidents, natural disasters. 11.000 youth from 194 universities from 78 cities applied to participate in voluntary activities, and nearly 6000 were selected to take part in 105 online activities. As the sustainability of the practice is one of the priorities, online questionnaires were answered by young volunteers at the end of activities, as it has been organized each year to develop the project. In addition, further feedbacks received from NGOs to make future experiences more fruithful. In addition to the efforts of raising awareness on volunteering amongst young with this practice, Akbank also organized a summit named ‘Wanted: Heroes To Save The World’ targeting university students and public. In the summit attended by leading professionals, volunteers, social entrepreneurs, NGO managers, students and celebrities working in this area, volunteering and its impacts are discussed in different aspects.

    Results/Outputs/Impacts

    In 2020, due to pandemic restrictions, the project was implemented via online channels. So in collaboration with partnering NGOs we created online activities and workshops where we can engage university students for volunteering aspects to contribute developing awareness around all these issues. This on the one hand was the main constraints as offline activities may create more fruitful results on their sense of involvement, on the other hand was an opportunity to reach more young students as the activities were all online.

    Enabling factors and constraints

    The main constraint was the pandemic restrictions, which has made physical interaction impossible. So the project was implemented via online channels using technology. In collaboration with partnering NGOs we created online activities and workshops where we can engage university students for volunteering aspects to contribute developing awareness around all these issues.

    Sustainability and replicability

    As well as supporting economic growth, in Akbank we consider our primary responsibilities to increase the educational and cultural level of our community and support entrepreneurial energy, which goes far beyond banking. With our “Akbank Volunteers” system, we are trying to add value to our society together with our employees and their families, and our customers and partners. With the project “The Goodwill of the City”, we expanded our volunteering activities together with the college students. The initiative has expanded its impact each year by adding new NGOs and volunteers from university students. It attracts each year considerable attention among university students following the application announcements via its web site and on social media. Akbank also aims to popularize volunteering between the youth and support them to grow up as socially responsible individuals to contribute towards sustainable community development.

    Other sources of information

    Website of the project: www.sehriniyihali.com. All the applications were collected from the official website. 21 Instagram stories was shared from corporate Akbank accounts and the reach was 8.000. Totally 3 posts were shared from Akbank corporate account and reach of 52K obtained. 7 relevant influencers were selected and they also posted Project announcements to their followers more than 2,5 million. Media relations activities with Press releases and special news were organized throughout the period of the process. Goodwill of The City 2019 Video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOZUBohm1Q4

    COVID-19 Impact

    Because of the Pandemic restrictions in 2020, the physical engagement was not possible, so we decided to implement the project online unlike the previous years. We organized all the activities with university students and NGOs online by focusing on creating awareness amongst university students about volunteering, how they can be volunteer for an issue with which NGO and how they can change the society in collaboration with NGOs. NGOs both explained their operation areas, targets and needs to responds SDGs and they organized relevant workshops via online meetings and activities. The young people attended to the activities in their homes felt better as they had the opportunity for a volunteering activity in physically restricted days.

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    This initiative does not yet fulfil the SMART criteria.
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    Timeline
    05 October 2020 (start date)
    20 December 2020 (date of completion)
    Entity
    Akbank
    Ongoing
    No
    SDGs
    Other beneficiaries

    Main partners are NGOs and they are also main beneficiaries as they need volunteers to develop community capacities such as ability, skill and knowledge of mobilizing resources, planning and solving problems. The other key stakeholders are the university students as the practice not only encourages volunteering activities for them but also provides them the opportunity to become acquainted with Non-governmental Organizations and to take part within.

    More information
    Countries
    Turkey
    Turkey
    Contact Information

    Utku, Corporate Social Responsibility Manager