Dear Colleagues,

As the first months of 2023 are over, I want to start by hoping that each and every one of you is well. When we were saying that everything was going well, unfortunately, we experienced the earthquake disaster that shook our country and destroyed 10 of our cities. We were in close contact with all our colleagues who had their families, friends and relatives in the regions. While we were worried about our families and loved ones, we shared the pain and hopeful expectancies of all earthquake victims in the region as a country. Difficult times, but all these also led to a state of mobilization in which unity and solidarity were carried to the highest level and raised good hopes in all of us. As the big ATU Family, we showed a strong example of solidarity in this mobilization.

Isn't life what happens to us while we are making plans? What did we do... We continued on our way, we continued to work.

Within this period, we took action as quickly as possible for earthquake aids. With the aid vehicles we set out for Hatay, we delivered the most needed materials to the region. In our vehicles, there were materials such as thermal blankets, heaters, generators, gasoline, diesel, winter clothes, baby needs, hygiene kits, water and dry food. We sent blankets, thermal underwear, socks, toys and paint sets to the children and their families in Adıyaman. We provided food support to aid vehicles going from Antalya Airport to Hatay. Again, we sent mini refrigerators to the earthquake zone in cooperation with Unifree. In addition, we donated 1 million TL to AFAD. We started a charity campaign within the company with your participation. We doubled the source generated by your contributions to the campaign, and transferred it to the 'ATU Our Youth is Our Future Fund', established by our company within the Turkish Education Foundation (TEV). With this fund, the one-year training of our 15 young people, who are TEV scholars in the earthquake zone, has already begun to be covered.

The 'ATU Our Youth is Our Future Fund' will continue to be a source to support the education of more young people and our children by creating social benefits with regular donations made by our company on your behalf. From now on, we plan to continue our activities focused on supporting our citizens and children affected by the earthquake with social responsibility projects that we will implement in cooperation with local and non-governmental organizations. We have recently organized the 'Natural Disaster with Nasuh Mahruki' webinar in order to raise awareness on the subject and provide you the most accurate information regarding the precautions that can be taken. Within the framework of our training plans, our online training/webinars under this issue and different titles will continue.

I hope that we will not experience such sad situations for our country again. I would like to take this opportunity to thank all ATU employees for their sensitivity and strong solidarity they have shown. I would like to express once again that I am proud to be a part of this family.

In the meantime, with the 'Time for Change 2.0' project, which we started to evaluate the results of the 'Great Place to Work' survey, our action plans started to emerge based on the feedback of our ATU Cultural Ambassadors. We will continue our focus group meetings under the leadership of our volunteer facilitators, whom we now accept as 'ATU Cultural Ambassadors', in order to harmonize the happy ATU culture with the changes brought by time, your needs and expectations. We are excited to share with you soon our action plans that emerged with the synergy arising from these meetings.

I hope to spend a spring term in which we rekindle our hopes as a country and realize our goals by being renewed together as a company. On this occasion, I congratulate you on the upcoming Ramadan holiday and wish you a healthy and happy eid with your loved ones.

With warm regards,

Pınar Şener Harput
Chief Business Support Officer