Evening MBA Students Raise Funds for Turkey Nonprofit

As part of the Global Business Perspectives course, 16 Eller Evening MBA students visited the Foundation for the Support Of Women’s Work (KEDV) during their trip to Istanbul, Turkey. The students learned that KEDV, a non-profit NGO, builds social, economic and community assets for and by women at the grassroots level.  KEDV supports women’s leadership throughout Turkey in order to improve the quality of their lives and the community’s. The foundation accomplishes this by providing mentoring, business education and access to micro loans for women-owned businesses.

Professor Nathan Podsakoff saw that the students were both impressed and moved by the foundation’s mission. He posed a challenge for them to donate funds to the center and he offered to match them dollar for dollar up to $500. “The KEDV fund-raising challenge is complete, and the Evening MBA students crushed my expectations… in a very positive way!” says Podsakoff. “Across two weeks, the students donated $959. This is fantastic, and I decided to increase my ‘matching’ limit.” As a result $2,000 has been collected and will be sent to help this very worthy organization fund more micro loans for women-owned businesses. Nathan added, “I think we can be very proud of and should help them in their mission.”

Once the micro loans are created, KEDV will send profiles of the businesses helped so the students are able to see how their donation were put to work in Turkey.