KOÇ HOLDING CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD ÖMER M. KOÇ:
“INEQUALITY OF OPPORTUNITY IN EDUCATION SEEMS TO HAVE EVEN BEEN MORE DEEPENED WITH THE PANDEMIC. OUR BIGGEST RESPONSIBILITY IS TO PREPARE OUR CHILDREN FOR THE RAPIDLY CHANGING WORLD AND FOR THE FUTURE WHICH WILL BE VERY DIFFERENT FROM TODAY. WE MUST SEE EDUCATION AS OUR MOST IMPORTANT PROBLEM OF THE HIGHEST PRIORITY FOR THE SAKE OF PROSPEROUS AND ENLIGHTENED TOMORROWS OF OUR COUNTRY.”
Vehbi Koç Award, granted every year by Vehbi Koç Foundation in one of the culture, education and healthcare fields with a view to incentivising the individuals and institutions giving contribution to enhancement of life quality of people, is awarded this year to İLKYAR (Aid Foundation for Elementary Schools) and its founder Prof. Dr. Hüseyin Vural due to their pioneering initiatives in education. Speaking in the ceremony hosted by Arter and held in digital platform due to pandemic conditions, Koç Holding Chairman of the Board Ömer M. Koç said: “It is a joint responsibility of all of us to raise individuals who are well-equipped and informed and interested in science, culture and arts and have acquired the critical reading, analytical thinking and synthesizing skills being the foundation of free thought in school years. We must see education as our most important problem of the highest priority for the sake of prosperous and enlightened tomorrows of our country. Otherwise, how can we raise generations with “free thought, free conscience, free knowledge” as demanded by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk from us? How happy are we that we have patriotic people who are conscious of this fact, and take on responsibility, and lead the community whatever the conditions and circumstances are. And our award of this evening is going to such a valuable and special person whose story is also as special as him.”
And in his speech covering the stories of İLKYAR and of the children and the young touched by İLKYAR all over our country, Prof. Dr. Hüseyin Vural said: “When you touch the children, they can make good use of their capacities. Everything starts with self-confidence. Rural children are the most unlucky segment of children of this country in education. In mobile teaching system, they are taken to other centres and mostly to good schools, but they cannot take advantage of the facilities and potentials of those schools. However, Edison of this country will not necessarily come from metropolitan or large cities. Maybe some Edisons will come out of those villages one day. We have determined some of these rural children as our Science Ambassadors. We have already assigned various sources to them. We are talking to and performing experiments with them via tablet computers. My biggest motivation of life is to witness that these children climb the ladder, and make contributions to their country and nation and to the humanity. Our Summer Science School is active since 19 years. The best scientists of each discipline are meeting with the children in this school. But the Summer Science School lasts for only 8-9 days a year. We wish to hold it open all the year round. And therefore we have a dream of establishing a Science and Art Village, addressing all children and their parents and open to children from both villages and cities, equipped by the best possible infrastructure, with laboratories to be continuously updated.”
Vehbi Koç Award, granted every year in one of the culture, education and healthcare fields in turn, by Vehbi Koç Foundation which was founded 52 years ago as the first private foundation of Turkey, is granted this year in “education” field by a ceremony hosted by Arter and held in digital platform due to pandemic conditions. From among 3 candidates suggested by the Selection Committee comprised of Prof. Dr. Petek Aşkar, Prof. Dr. İpek Gürkaynak, Prof. Dr. Hasan Şimşek and Işık Tüzün under chair of Prof. Dr. Mehmet Ali Alpar, Vehbi Koç Foundation’s Board of Directors awarded the 20th Vehbi Koç Award to İLKYAR (Aid Foundation for Elementary Schools) and its founder Prof. Dr. Hüseyin Vural due to their pioneering initiatives in the field of “education.”
The award ceremony was organized in Arter, a Vehbi Koç Foundation Subsidiary, offering a lively and sustainable culture and life platform accessible by everyone with its program covering all disciplines of arts. Arter has moved to its new building in Dolapdere in 2019 and features two performance halls. Sevgi Gönül Auditorium, used for this ceremony, is normally hosting not only movie screenings, speeches and conversations, but also examples of performance arts, dancing and motion activities, and small acoustic auditions and concerts.
Master of the ceremony was Fatma Yıldırım, a post-graduate student in Karadeniz Technical University, working as a volunteer of İLKYAR since 3 years and explaining this process as “my journey changing my life and enabling me to get beyond the borders of my village.”
Prof. Dr. Hüseyin Vural has sowed the first seeds of İLKYAR Foundation during his doctorate study in the United States in 1977. After return of Vural to Turkey, the Foundation was founded in 1998 jointly by Prof. Dr. Vural Altın, Prof. Dr. Sıddık Yarman and Prof. Dr. Mahir Arıkol with a view to supporting the imagination of children, developing their self-confidence, and allowing the emergence of all kinds of their skills and abilities. In İLKYAR Foundation taking steps as much as it can in order to motivate the children in their areas of interest, and to supply books, and education, sports and game materials to boarding schools, and to inculcate the children in rural schools with reading habits, and not to leave any school without book aid, all activities are carried out on a volunteer basis. Volunteers are organizing entertaining activities in many fields from literature to painting, from mathematics to physics, in rural schools, and giving scholarships to needy children, and distributing gifts, and hosting the successful children in summer schools in the Middle East Technical University and Boğaziçi University.
Speaking in the ceremony broadcasted in Youtube channels of Vehbi Koç Foundation and Koç Holding, Koç Holding Chairman of the Board Ömer M. Koç said: “This award ceremony organized online due to the pandemic provides us with a valuable chance to commemorate Vehbi Koç once more in the 25th anniversary of his death and to remind the values to which he has devoted his life. Vehbi Koç’s saying ‘We exist as long as our country exists’ is an indicator of his vision far beyond his time and his sense of unity with the fate of all our stakeholders. With this sense of responsibility, he has brought in very valuable institutions and organizations in education, healthcare and culture for our country. Keeping his values and ideals alive is a great source of pride and an honourable duty for us.”
Ömer M. Koç: “Inequality of opportunity in education seems to have even been more deepened with the pandemic.”
“This evening, we are not only awarding a very valuable foundation and person, but also witnessing once more to which extent we can achieve only if we work hard with determination,” said Ömer M. Koç, and continued: “There is no doubt that the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic has had very negative effects in many areas. However, its consequences in education are especially attention-grabbing and worrisome. A look at the statistics of ‘Remote Education in Figures’ published by the Ministry of National Education in its website reveals that around 2.5 million students do not have any access to Education Informatics Network. I’m sure that our Government is closely monitoring the field conditions, and the results of monitoring are shedding a light on the measures contemplated to be taken. In any case, however, exclusion of around 15 percent or 16 percent of our students from the system points at a grave situation. I’m afraid this lack of access makes even more negative effects particularly on our children living in socioeconomically disadvantages regions of our country. In summary, the ongoing problem created by the pandemic seems to have even increased in size, and the inequality of opportunity in education seems to have even more deepened. Our biggest responsibility is to prepare our children for the rapidly changing world and for the future which will surely be very different from today. We must equip them with skills, qualifications and competences sought for in the 21st century, so that they can make ground for themselves and have a say in the world of the tomorrow. It is a joint responsibility of all of us to raise individuals who are well-equipped and informed and interested in science, culture and arts and have acquired the critical reading, analytical thinking and synthesizing skills being the foundation of free thought in school years. We must see education as our most important problem of the highest priority for the sake of prosperous and enlightened tomorrows of our country. Otherwise, how can we raise generations with ‘free thought, free conscience, free knowledge’ as demanded by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk from us? How happy are we that we have patriotic people who are conscious of this fact, and take on responsibility, and lead the community whatever the conditions and circumstances are. And our award of this evening is going to such a valuable and special person whose story is also as special as him.”
Prof. Dr. Hüseyin Vural: “(…) Edison of this country will not necessarily come from metropolitan or large cities. Being conscious of this fact, we have supplied books, computers and internet connection to 81 villages in 81 provinces of Turkey. Thus, students gained access to EBA…”
While receiving his award from Ömer M. Koç, Prof. Dr. Hüseyin Vural explained the stories of İLKYAR and of the children and the young touched by İLKYAR all over our country: “I believe that to bring all of these children together in nice activities will be very helpful for the future of our country. When you touch the children and make them feel themselves important, they can make good use of their capacities, work with a great excitement, and achieve everything. Now, parallel to the advancement of technologies, a lot of disincentives are also emerging. Memories of 2 terabytes are being sold. Soon, memories of 4 terabytes will surely be introduced to market. You can store 500 thousands of books in a memory of 4 terabytes, i.e. you can easily put the whole fund of knowledge of the humanity in your pocket. Yes, we can achieve a lot of good things by internalizing this fund of knowledge, but if we head towards wrong intentions and directions, technology does not bring any benefit, but starts to play a narcotizing role. Very interesting information and videos are coming via social media, to such extent that we are blown away by these excellences and wonders, but in fact both children and we are starting to be narcotized slowly. We are becoming depressed thinking that ‘We can’t do nothing, as they have already done all’. We can offer novelties and innovations to the humanity only with self-confidence nourished by knowledge.”
Speaking about the Science Ambassador project initiated by İLKYAR, Prof. Dr. Hüseyin Vural said: “We have chosen 81 rural children from 81 provinces as our librarians. They are coming together in front of the computer, and can watch and get their EBA lessons. Rural children are the most unlucky segment of children of this country in education. In mobile teaching system, they are taken to other centres and mostly to good schools. There, when the lessons end at around two and two and a half o’clock in the afternoon, they immediately get on service buses and return to their villages. They cannot take advantage of the facilities and potentials of those schools. They are doing whatever they are expected to do in their villages: either they are cleaning the barns or they are helping their mothers. So they are putting off the education. However, Edison of this country will not necessarily come from metropolitan or large cities. Maybe some Edisons will come out of those villages one day. The excitement of education must at all times be kept alive. Our Ministry of National Education has a very nice motto: ‘We cannot have even one individual ignored in education.’ Our ‘Science Ambassadors’ are working like a librarian and distributing books to children. We are talking to and making experiments with them via internet. We have started a great journey with our Science Ambassadors. They are very good children and it is my sincere belief that they will make great achievements. I am living so as to see the days they will serve our nation by maintaining their humanitarian values, love, respect and smiles.”
Prof. Dr. Hüseyin Vural also mentioned about İLKYAR’s Summer Science School, which has been established 19 years ago and supported by TÜBİTAK: “Our Science School is within the campus of the Middle East Technical University (METU). Scientists from METU are meeting with children there. Children are developing their own experimental sets and organizing many activities. And each Summer Science School, they are promising us: ‘We are also going to be beneficial to our country and nation, just like you.’ But the Summer Science School lasts for only 8-9 days a year. We wish to hold it open all the year round. And therefore we have a dream of establishing a Science and Arts Village, addressing all children and their parents and open to children from both villages and cities, equipped by the best possible infrastructure, with laboratories to be continuously updated.”
Prof. Dr. Hüseyin Vural finished his words by saying: “Fortunately, this foundation is founded by Vehbi Koç. Fortunately, you are continuing these charities. We are commemorating Vehbi Koç with mercy and gratitude, and I am thanking very much to all of you.”
About Prof. Dr. Hüseyin Vural:
He is born in Sarayköy-Denizli in 1951. After graduating from Istanbul Technical University in 1973, he completed his post-graduate study in Boğaziçi University in 1976 and his doctorate study in Rutgers University in 1982. Prof. Dr. Hüseyin Vural started to work as an academician in the Mechanical Engineering Department of METU in 1987, and also chaired METU Continuing Education Centre, and was retired from METU in 2018. Prof. Dr. Hüseyin Vural is the chairman of İLKYAR Foundation since its foundation.
About İLKYAR Foundation:
İLKYAR (Aid Foundation for Elementary Schools) was founded in 1998 jointly by Prof. Dr. Vural Altın, Prof. Dr. Sıddık Yarman, Prof. Dr. Mahir Arıkol and Prof. Dr. Hüseyin Vural. İLKYAR is based upon Educational Funds for Elementary Schools (EFES) which was founded with a view to giving full support to all rural schools. EFES was put into practice by Hüseyin Vural during his doctorate study in the United States in 1978. İLKYAR is continuing its activities with the motto of equality of all human beings particularly with a view to creating an excitement of education in rural children and motivating them to continue their education up to more advanced levels and making contribution to their education.
About Vehbi Koç Foundation
Vehbi Koç Foundation, founded on January 17, 1969 by the deceased Vehbi Koç, who has become a role model of the Turkish industry, is having justified pride of tens of valuable works built in Turkey and of support given so far to tens of thousands of students in the 52nd anniversary of its foundation. Since the day of its foundation as the first private foundation of Turkey, it is providing pioneer and leading services enhancing the quality of life of the community in education, healthcare and culture areas with the intention of making contribution to a contemporary and developing Turkey. Vehbi Koç Foundation has so far established a lot of institutions and organizations in education, healthcare and culture and given support to hundreds of projects in Turkey, and the number of students supported by Vehbi Koç Foundation scholarships in 52 years has already exceeded 50 thousands. You can follow all developments relating to Vehbi Koç Foundation from www.vkv.org.tr.
About Vehbi Koç Award
Vehbi Koç Reward is being granted in education, healthcare and culture since 2002, and aims to promote and award the services adding value to and setting an example for the community.
For detailed information and the list of winners, please see: http://www.vehbikocodulu.com
“INEQUALITY OF OPPORTUNITY IN EDUCATION SEEMS TO HAVE EVEN BEEN MORE DEEPENED WITH THE PANDEMIC. OUR BIGGEST RESPONSIBILITY IS TO PREPARE OUR CHILDREN FOR THE RAPIDLY CHANGING WORLD AND FOR THE FUTURE WHICH WILL BE VERY DIFFERENT FROM TODAY. WE MUST SEE EDUCATION AS OUR MOST IMPORTANT PROBLEM OF THE HIGHEST PRIORITY FOR THE SAKE OF PROSPEROUS AND ENLIGHTENED TOMORROWS OF OUR COUNTRY.”
Vehbi Koç Award, granted every year by Vehbi Koç Foundation in one of the culture, education and healthcare fields with a view to incentivising the individuals and institutions giving contribution to enhancement of life quality of people, is awarded this year to İLKYAR (Aid Foundation for Elementary Schools) and its founder Prof. Dr. Hüseyin Vural due to their pioneering initiatives in education. Speaking in the ceremony hosted by Arter and held in digital platform due to pandemic conditions, Koç Holding Chairman of the Board Ömer M. Koç said: “It is a joint responsibility of all of us to raise individuals who are well-equipped and informed and interested in science, culture and arts and have acquired the critical reading, analytical thinking and synthesizing skills being the foundation of free thought in school years. We must see education as our most important problem of the highest priority for the sake of prosperous and enlightened tomorrows of our country. Otherwise, how can we raise generations with “free thought, free conscience, free knowledge” as demanded by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk from us? How happy are we that we have patriotic people who are conscious of this fact, and take on responsibility, and lead the community whatever the conditions and circumstances are. And our award of this evening is going to such a valuable and special person whose story is also as special as him.”
And in his speech covering the stories of İLKYAR and of the children and the young touched by İLKYAR all over our country, Prof. Dr. Hüseyin Vural said: “When you touch the children, they can make good use of their capacities. Everything starts with self-confidence. Rural children are the most unlucky segment of children of this country in education. In mobile teaching system, they are taken to other centres and mostly to good schools, but they cannot take advantage of the facilities and potentials of those schools. However, Edison of this country will not necessarily come from metropolitan or large cities. Maybe some Edisons will come out of those villages one day. We have determined some of these rural children as our Science Ambassadors. We have already assigned various sources to them. We are talking to and performing experiments with them via tablet computers. My biggest motivation of life is to witness that these children climb the ladder, and make contributions to their country and nation and to the humanity. Our Summer Science School is active since 19 years. The best scientists of each discipline are meeting with the children in this school. But the Summer Science School lasts for only 8-9 days a year. We wish to hold it open all the year round. And therefore we have a dream of establishing a Science and Art Village, addressing all children and their parents and open to children from both villages and cities, equipped by the best possible infrastructure, with laboratories to be continuously updated.”
Vehbi Koç Award, granted every year in one of the culture, education and healthcare fields in turn, by Vehbi Koç Foundation which was founded 52 years ago as the first private foundation of Turkey, is granted this year in “education” field by a ceremony hosted by Arter and held in digital platform due to pandemic conditions. From among 3 candidates suggested by the Selection Committee comprised of Prof. Dr. Petek Aşkar, Prof. Dr. İpek Gürkaynak, Prof. Dr. Hasan Şimşek and Işık Tüzün under chair of Prof. Dr. Mehmet Ali Alpar, Vehbi Koç Foundation’s Board of Directors awarded the 20th Vehbi Koç Award to İLKYAR (Aid Foundation for Elementary Schools) and its founder Prof. Dr. Hüseyin Vural due to their pioneering initiatives in the field of “education.”
The award ceremony was organized in Arter, a Vehbi Koç Foundation Subsidiary, offering a lively and sustainable culture and life platform accessible by everyone with its program covering all disciplines of arts. Arter has moved to its new building in Dolapdere in 2019 and features two performance halls. Sevgi Gönül Auditorium, used for this ceremony, is normally hosting not only movie screenings, speeches and conversations, but also examples of performance arts, dancing and motion activities, and small acoustic auditions and concerts.
Master of the ceremony was Fatma Yıldırım, a post-graduate student in Karadeniz Technical University, working as a volunteer of İLKYAR since 3 years and explaining this process as “my journey changing my life and enabling me to get beyond the borders of my village.”
Prof. Dr. Hüseyin Vural has sowed the first seeds of İLKYAR Foundation during his doctorate study in the United States in 1977. After return of Vural to Turkey, the Foundation was founded in 1998 jointly by Prof. Dr. Vural Altın, Prof. Dr. Sıddık Yarman and Prof. Dr. Mahir Arıkol with a view to supporting the imagination of children, developing their self-confidence, and allowing the emergence of all kinds of their skills and abilities. In İLKYAR Foundation taking steps as much as it can in order to motivate the children in their areas of interest, and to supply books, and education, sports and game materials to boarding schools, and to inculcate the children in rural schools with reading habits, and not to leave any school without book aid, all activities are carried out on a volunteer basis. Volunteers are organizing entertaining activities in many fields from literature to painting, from mathematics to physics, in rural schools, and giving scholarships to needy children, and distributing gifts, and hosting the successful children in summer schools in the Middle East Technical University and Boğaziçi University.
Speaking in the ceremony broadcasted in Youtube channels of Vehbi Koç Foundation and Koç Holding, Koç Holding Chairman of the Board Ömer M. Koç said: “This award ceremony organized online due to the pandemic provides us with a valuable chance to commemorate Vehbi Koç once more in the 25th anniversary of his death and to remind the values to which he has devoted his life. Vehbi Koç’s saying ‘We exist as long as our country exists’ is an indicator of his vision far beyond his time and his sense of unity with the fate of all our stakeholders. With this sense of responsibility, he has brought in very valuable institutions and organizations in education, healthcare and culture for our country. Keeping his values and ideals alive is a great source of pride and an honourable duty for us.”
Ömer M. Koç: “Inequality of opportunity in education seems to have even been more deepened with the pandemic.”
“This evening, we are not only awarding a very valuable foundation and person, but also witnessing once more to which extent we can achieve only if we work hard with determination,” said Ömer M. Koç, and continued: “There is no doubt that the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic has had very negative effects in many areas. However, its consequences in education are especially attention-grabbing and worrisome. A look at the statistics of ‘Remote Education in Figures’ published by the Ministry of National Education in its website reveals that around 2.5 million students do not have any access to Education Informatics Network. I’m sure that our Government is closely monitoring the field conditions, and the results of monitoring are shedding a light on the measures contemplated to be taken. In any case, however, exclusion of around 15 percent or 16 percent of our students from the system points at a grave situation. I’m afraid this lack of access makes even more negative effects particularly on our children living in socioeconomically disadvantages regions of our country. In summary, the ongoing problem created by the pandemic seems to have even increased in size, and the inequality of opportunity in education seems to have even more deepened. Our biggest responsibility is to prepare our children for the rapidly changing world and for the future which will surely be very different from today. We must equip them with skills, qualifications and competences sought for in the 21st century, so that they can make ground for themselves and have a say in the world of the tomorrow. It is a joint responsibility of all of us to raise individuals who are well-equipped and informed and interested in science, culture and arts and have acquired the critical reading, analytical thinking and synthesizing skills being the foundation of free thought in school years. We must see education as our most important problem of the highest priority for the sake of prosperous and enlightened tomorrows of our country. Otherwise, how can we raise generations with ‘free thought, free conscience, free knowledge’ as demanded by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk from us? How happy are we that we have patriotic people who are conscious of this fact, and take on responsibility, and lead the community whatever the conditions and circumstances are. And our award of this evening is going to such a valuable and special person whose story is also as special as him.”
Prof. Dr. Hüseyin Vural: “(…) Edison of this country will not necessarily come from metropolitan or large cities. Being conscious of this fact, we have supplied books, computers and internet connection to 81 villages in 81 provinces of Turkey. Thus, students gained access to EBA…”
While receiving his award from Ömer M. Koç, Prof. Dr. Hüseyin Vural explained the stories of İLKYAR and of the children and the young touched by İLKYAR all over our country: “I believe that to bring all of these children together in nice activities will be very helpful for the future of our country. When you touch the children and make them feel themselves important, they can make good use of their capacities, work with a great excitement, and achieve everything. Now, parallel to the advancement of technologies, a lot of disincentives are also emerging. Memories of 2 terabytes are being sold. Soon, memories of 4 terabytes will surely be introduced to market. You can store 500 thousands of books in a memory of 4 terabytes, i.e. you can easily put the whole fund of knowledge of the humanity in your pocket. Yes, we can achieve a lot of good things by internalizing this fund of knowledge, but if we head towards wrong intentions and directions, technology does not bring any benefit, but starts to play a narcotizing role. Very interesting information and videos are coming via social media, to such extent that we are blown away by these excellences and wonders, but in fact both children and we are starting to be narcotized slowly. We are becoming depressed thinking that ‘We can’t do nothing, as they have already done all’. We can offer novelties and innovations to the humanity only with self-confidence nourished by knowledge.”
Speaking about the Science Ambassador project initiated by İLKYAR, Prof. Dr. Hüseyin Vural said: “We have chosen 81 rural children from 81 provinces as our librarians. They are coming together in front of the computer, and can watch and get their EBA lessons. Rural children are the most unlucky segment of children of this country in education. In mobile teaching system, they are taken to other centres and mostly to good schools. There, when the lessons end at around two and two and a half o’clock in the afternoon, they immediately get on service buses and return to their villages. They cannot take advantage of the facilities and potentials of those schools. They are doing whatever they are expected to do in their villages: either they are cleaning the barns or they are helping their mothers. So they are putting off the education. However, Edison of this country will not necessarily come from metropolitan or large cities. Maybe some Edisons will come out of those villages one day. The excitement of education must at all times be kept alive. Our Ministry of National Education has a very nice motto: ‘We cannot have even one individual ignored in education.’ Our ‘Science Ambassadors’ are working like a librarian and distributing books to children. We are talking to and making experiments with them via internet. We have started a great journey with our Science Ambassadors. They are very good children and it is my sincere belief that they will make great achievements. I am living so as to see the days they will serve our nation by maintaining their humanitarian values, love, respect and smiles.”
Prof. Dr. Hüseyin Vural also mentioned about İLKYAR’s Summer Science School, which has been established 19 years ago and supported by TÜBİTAK: “Our Science School is within the campus of the Middle East Technical University (METU). Scientists from METU are meeting with children there. Children are developing their own experimental sets and organizing many activities. And each Summer Science School, they are promising us: ‘We are also going to be beneficial to our country and nation, just like you.’ But the Summer Science School lasts for only 8-9 days a year. We wish to hold it open all the year round. And therefore we have a dream of establishing a Science and Arts Village, addressing all children and their parents and open to children from both villages and cities, equipped by the best possible infrastructure, with laboratories to be continuously updated.”
Prof. Dr. Hüseyin Vural finished his words by saying: “Fortunately, this foundation is founded by Vehbi Koç. Fortunately, you are continuing these charities. We are commemorating Vehbi Koç with mercy and gratitude, and I am thanking very much to all of you.”
About Prof. Dr. Hüseyin Vural:
He is born in Sarayköy-Denizli in 1951. After graduating from Istanbul Technical University in 1973, he completed his post-graduate study in Boğaziçi University in 1976 and his doctorate study in Rutgers University in 1982. Prof. Dr. Hüseyin Vural started to work as an academician in the Mechanical Engineering Department of METU in 1987, and also chaired METU Continuing Education Centre, and was retired from METU in 2018. Prof. Dr. Hüseyin Vural is the chairman of İLKYAR Foundation since its foundation.
About İLKYAR Foundation:
İLKYAR (Aid Foundation for Elementary Schools) was founded in 1998 jointly by Prof. Dr. Vural Altın, Prof. Dr. Sıddık Yarman, Prof. Dr. Mahir Arıkol and Prof. Dr. Hüseyin Vural. İLKYAR is based upon Educational Funds for Elementary Schools (EFES) which was founded with a view to giving full support to all rural schools. EFES was put into practice by Hüseyin Vural during his doctorate study in the United States in 1978. İLKYAR is continuing its activities with the motto of equality of all human beings particularly with a view to creating an excitement of education in rural children and motivating them to continue their education up to more advanced levels and making contribution to their education.
About Vehbi Koç Foundation
Vehbi Koç Foundation, founded on January 17, 1969 by the deceased Vehbi Koç, who has become a role model of the Turkish industry, is having justified pride of tens of valuable works built in Turkey and of support given so far to tens of thousands of students in the 52nd anniversary of its foundation. Since the day of its foundation as the first private foundation of Turkey, it is providing pioneer and leading services enhancing the quality of life of the community in education, healthcare and culture areas with the intention of making contribution to a contemporary and developing Turkey. Vehbi Koç Foundation has so far established a lot of institutions and organizations in education, healthcare and culture and given support to hundreds of projects in Turkey, and the number of students supported by Vehbi Koç Foundation scholarships in 52 years has already exceeded 50 thousands. You can follow all developments relating to Vehbi Koç Foundation from www.vkv.org.tr.
About Vehbi Koç Award
Vehbi Koç Reward is being granted in education, healthcare and culture since 2002, and aims to promote and award the services adding value to and setting an example for the community.
For detailed information and the list of winners, please see: http://www.vehbikocodulu.com