Kimse Yok Mu Relief Agency

We traveled to the outskirts of the city to visit Kimse Yok Mu relief organization.  The name of this organization translates into "Is Anybody there?"  It was founded in 2002 following relief efforts from the disasterous 1999 earthquake in Turkey.  Its first international relief efforts were in 2004 with the Indonesian tsunami.    It has since provided assistance in many places, including Palestine, Lebanon, Peru, Bangladesh, Sudan/Darfur, Georgia, Myanmar, China, and Haiti.  It is a recognized NGO within ECOSOC in the UN.

Its mission goals include:  building a more peaceful world while fighting poverty and inequality;  protecting innocent people in war zones; and helping people from all over in order to "spread kindness around the world and to create and follow social support models".  

The principle of voluntariness is important - people doing good for each other.

We learned that the government regulates the amount of money that can be used for operations/overhead in NGOs to 10%.  Kimse Yok Mu is at 6%.  Its not quite clear to me how this is counted if large donations such as their headquarters building is donated by corporations. 

Corporations get a 100% tax write off for their charitable giving.  The standard corporate tax rate is 20%.  I don't know how much that changes under certain conditions.  Individual tax rates are between 15-35% (FYI)

We visited their shiny new headquarters in Istanbul.  The funding for their entire 6 story building was provided by 5 or 6 corporations.  

We saw their warehouse as well as volunteers who were packaging emergency food shipments.

This is an example of the shelters that they have ready to ship in cases of emergencies.  The transportation costs for the agency are often sponsored by corporations as well.

This is their rescue vehicle, specially designed to extract people from collapsed buildings from earthquakes (Turkey is prone to earthquakes).  The value of the equipment is about $500,0000.