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IN THIS ISSUE: Letter
from Friends Of Anatolia ORGANIZATIONAL NEWS New Advisors CULTURAL NEWS Kilims |
| VISION To
contribute to peace and democracy by encouraging the growth of
Turkish civil society. MISSION To strengthen community participation by supporting education, promoting volunteerism and philanthropy, and fostering cultural exchange. |
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| Friends of
Anatolia 236
Castro St.
Unit 1 Phone:(650)
964-2646 Our Volunteer Center is solely staffed by our dedicated volunteers. Please call ahead if you would like to visit us.
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| ORGANIZATIONAL NEWS Advisory Council Our board members Nicole Kanda, Baris Karadogan, and Mary Ann Whitten have completed their board terms and joined our Advisory Council. We also proudly announce our latest advisors who will be sharing their experience with us and be our mentors going on forward. |
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| Volunteer Corner
Immediately after working with us for the concert project in April, Muge took the leadership on the Turkish classes we offer at our Volunteer Center. Thanks to her time and efforts, Friends of Anatolia has organized and managed the first set of class sessions in June-July period successfully. Our classes were given by Muge Bakircioglu and Deniz Demiray, two of our dedicated volunteers. We look forward to working with Muge again, who recently gave birth to her first child. Congratulations Muge! Please contact us if you would like to volunteer to teach Turkish at our Volunteer Center. To see a list of other volunteering opportunities, please visit our Volunteer page. |
Our
latest Volunteer of the Month is Muge Bakircioglu, who has coordinated
our Turkish classes during the summer. | ______________________ |
OUR VALUESWe are world citizens! Therefore we believe in: We work with professionalism! Thus we strive to achieve: We want to make a difference! So we encourage:
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| Letter from Friends Of Anatolia Dear Friends, It has been a while since we last shared with you some great news about Friends Of Anatolia. You will find brief descriptions of what we have done this year so far within this issue. Please take a moment to read them and visit our website for more detailed coverage. Our board members and other volunteers have been working hard to accomplish our goals for 2006. Our vice-president Sema Basol has recently come back from Turkey, where she examined the ongoing school projects, while our president Demet Yezgi has been involved with various other projects despite her time-consuming new job and Master's study.
Besides the school projects, we gave a scholarship to a teacher in Turkey, and created a donor advised scholarship fund to support a disabled Turkish Ph.D. student in California. Friends Of Anatolia also supported the Bay Area Turkish Community School, by sharing the grants it had received. In addition, we supported the modernization of the Ankara High School of Science Library as a fiscal sponsorship project. Consequently, 2006 has been a very fruitful year for our education projects. Please visit our Education page to see sample photos from these projects. Our Volunteer Center has been a great home for us to launch our projects. With its computer network, library, offices, displays and storage, it was one of our major strengths in 2006. We are sure that all of our supporters share the pride of having the one and only Turkish Volunteer Center in the U.S. We would like to acknowledge all the volunteers who made the Volunteer Center worthwhile during the last 15 months. After their successful contributions and our community building trips to Southern California and East Coast, we believe that we set the new standards for the concepts of volunteerism and philanthropy among the Turkish-American community. On the cultural side, we had several open house parties and concert events to promote Anatolian arts and culture and to introduce other cultures to our community. Our 2006 Calendar was also distributed in more than 20 states to amplify our voice. A jazz concert back in March and a classical guitar concert in April were the gems of these cultural efforts. During these last weeks of 2006, we are proud that we fulfilled all of the promises we made, for which we collected donations. As always, you can find the financial details of our organization at our website. On behalf of our Board of Directors, I wish you a happy holiday season. Thank you for all of your support to our organization during the last two years. It is your generosity and hard work that will make our society a better one. Best regards, Tugsan
Topcuoglu |
2006
has been a successful year for our projects and goals. After
a well-organized | ________________________________ |
| School Renovation Projects Our Vice President Sema Basol has recently come back from Turkey where she visited the schools we are renovating this year.
Mehmet Okur and Basak Toker, who are our coordinators in Turkey, worked with our other volunteers Ozhan Abat, Ceyhan Karaduman, and Gul Ayseven to oversee our school renovation projects. You can read more and see the latest pictures at our Education page on our website.. |
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| We Have Been 'Grant'ed! We are very excited to share with you that we have received our first grants this year. The Peninsula Community Foundation (PCF), based in Silicon Valley, has given us a $6,000 grant for our activities supporting volunteerism. In addition, The Turkish Cultural Foundation has given us two grants totaling $7,500, one in support of our Yildiztepe School Project and the other for Turkish Language Classes. |
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| Check Our Financials
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Sert
Family and Turkish Cultural Foundation Challenge Gifts' financial
reports are available now! You can also take
a look at our other financial reports, such as our 2005 review
and 990 tax form, on our | ________________________________ |
| BUILDING ALLIANCES Turkish Cultural Foundation (TCF)
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TCF
- Turkish Cultural Foundation is a public charitable organization
based in
Massachusetts, which promotes Turkish culture and heritage worlwide.
They have been one of our staunch supporters in 2006. TCF has provided
us a $5,000 challenge
gift for the benefit of our Yildiztepe school
renovation project and supported our Turkish
language class project with a grant of $2,500.| ________________________________ |
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The Turkish American Ladies League ("TALL") is one of the most active chapters of Association of Turkish Americans of Southern California (“ATASC”). This group of hardworking ladies support projects benefiting underprivileged children and those that promote the image of Turks and Turkey. They have raised more than $9,500 for our school renovation project in Yunus Emre Elementary School at Birecik, Sanliurfa. |
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| Library Modernization Project
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Ankara
High School of Science (AFL) Library Modernization Project
is one of the fiscal sponsorship projects of Friends of Anatolia.
The purpose of this project is to create a model high school
library. We are collaborating with the AFL Alumni in the US
as well as the AFL Foundation in Ankara to realize this project.
We are pleased to report that through a special fund started
in memory of the late Sevig Ayter (class of 1969), a total of $2,346
has been transferred to the AFL Foundation in support
of this project.|
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| "Shop the Same Way, Donate a Different Way!"
Currently Freepledge is in association with Amazon.com. To read more about Freepledge or to have part of your purchases donated to Friends of Anatolia, click here. |
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| Missionfish
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If
you sell an item on eBay, you can donate a percentage of your
proceeds to Friends of Anatolia! |
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| CULTURAL
ARTICLES Kilims The common aspect of kilims is the technical manner in which they are produced, which influences the shapes of the patterns. For this reason, the motifs were strongly stylized and were formed into geometrical forms. Kilims are made in different colors, designs, and composition. It is also possible to find them in various sizes. In different parts of Turkey, kilims are woven with several different combinations of materials, such as all wool, wool and cotton, or all silk. Kilims differ from other Turkish or “Anatolian” rugs as they are often used in contemporary decoration, making them at the same time valuable objects in the field of art. |
While
the origins of the word "kilim" is not exactly
known, it has been used in the Turkish language since
the 13th century.
Among kilims there are different types including "cicim", "zili" and "sumak.” For
centuries, these different designs were traditionally passed
down from mother to daughter. The weaving styles are named
after tribes, families, villages and towns where they are
made, or sometimes after the motifs used on them. _________________________
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Bodrum (Halicarnassus)
Bodrum, known in the ancient times as Halicarnassus, which was the capital of Karya (Caria), was the birthplace of Herodotus, and the site of King Mausolous' Tomb (4th century B.C.), one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. The Bodrum Castle by the harbor, or the medieval castle of St. Peter, is a great example of 15th century crusader architecture, and has been converted into the stunning Museum of Underwater Archeology , with remains dating as far back as the Bronze Age. Today, the beautiful Bodrum Peninsula suits vacationers interested in a subdued and relaxing atmosphere. Enchanting villages, with guesthouses and small hotels on quiet bays, dot the peninsula. On the southern coast, Bardakci, Gümbet, Bitez, Ortakent, Karaincir, Bagla and Akyarlar have world-renowned sandy beaches.
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| Did you know that... - St. Nicholas, also known as Santa Claus, was born in Demre, on Turkey’s Mediterranean Coast. - Noah’s Ark landed on Mount Agri (Ararat) in Eastern Turkey - The oldest known shipwreck on Earth was found and excavated in Uluburun near Kas, in the Mediterranean region of Turkey. - St. Paul was born in Tarsus, in southern Turkey. -
The first church dedicated to Virgin Mary is in Ephesus. |
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| Dish of
the month
Asure is one of the oldest and most traditional desserts of Turkish cuisine. The legend regarding the origins of asure dates back to Noah’s Arc. When the flood finally subsided and the Noah's Arc settled on Mount Ararat in Agri, those on the vessel wanted to hold a celebration as an _expression of the gratitude they felt towards God. But since the food storages on the ship were practically empty, they made a soup with all the remaining ingredients they could find and thus ended up with the “asure.” Following the legend, asure is today prepared by cooking together 15 or more ingredients. The pudding can be enriched with almonds, hazelnuts and currants. In addition to dried white beans and chickpeas, dried broad beans and dried black-eyed beans can also be added. |
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| Facts about Turkish Turkish, a language dating back 5500 to 8500 years, is the 6th most widely spoken language in the world. It is spoken in over 10 dialects-- the Azeri, the Türkmen, the Tartar, the Uzbek, the Baskurti, the Nogay, the Kyrgyz, the Kazakh, the Yakuti, the Cuvas and others. Turkish belongs to the Altaic branch of the Ural-Altaic family of languages, and thus is closely related to Mongolian, Manchu-Tungus, Korean, and perhaps Japanese. Turkish is an ancient language with several distinguishing factors: * Vowel harmony, a feature of all Ural-Altaic tongues. |
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Friends of Anatolia is a tax-exempt nonprofit organization
under section 501 (c) (3) of the Internal Revenue Code.