The members -- for the most part Turks, many of whom have lived in the United States -- aim to create both a culture of running and a new tradition of charitable giving in Turkey. Adım Adım’s first project culminated earlier this spring at the Antalya Marathon on Turkey’s spectacular Mediterranean coast. The team’s 62 runners raised more than YTL 73,000 for The Spinal Cord Paralytics Society of Turkey (TOFD).
The successful combination of long-distance running and fund-raising is well-known in many countries. In the US, for example, The Komen Race for the Cure and the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society’s Team in Training Program have, between themselves, raised over a billion dollars for cancer research through long-distance training programs established in the 1980s.
In Turkey, however, charitable giving through amateur running is a new concept. “Charity culture is not a common thing in Turkey,” says Cem Uçan, a technology consultant and one of Adım Adım’s founding members, “We had to establish a notion of charity first and then run for charity.” Bilgi University professor Itır Erhart, another founding member of Adım Adım, adds that people are sometimes skeptical when a runner invites others to donate. Erhart says people often ask: “Why are you running? Why don’t you just give the money?”
Faced with cultural obstacles to giving through running, Adım Adım sought advice from experts. On the charity front, they consulted with Erdal Yıldırım, general manager of the Vehbi Koç Foundation. He shared figures on the level of charitable giving in Turkey compared with other countries, noting that what works in other countries will not necessarily work in Turkey. Adım Adım also sought advice from running experts Ertan Hatipoğlu, a trainer for Turkey’s national team, and trainer Ahmet Özmine. Their expertise is available to new and veteran runners on the Adım Adım Web site at www.adimadim.org
Why running and giving?
Would not two separate organizations, one focused on running and the other on giving, yield better results for each cause? The answer for Erhart and Uçan is no; the two goals are integral. “They feed one another,” Erhart says.
Erhart explains that running, especially long-distance training, requires commitment. “You need a motivation,” she says. The commitment to run is not just to oneself but also to the people who donate to the cause. Conversely, the commitment to running makes it easier to raise money. “It’s a way to meet people, to tell them why you are running and why you are raising money,” she adds. It spreads the ideas of running and of giving around Turkey’s population of 73 million, one person at a time.
Most of Adım Adım’s members work in business, medicine and education. Applying their management savvy, they conducted focus groups to learn which issues people in Turkey view as the most country’s most pressing. The answer: health and education. The team chose to focus on health and, after researching eligible charities, settled on the TOFD (www.tofd.org.tr). The TOFD best met Adım Adım’s three selection criteria: transparency in financial reporting, ease of cooperation and concrete projects to be funded.
Erhart notes that the focus groups revealed that “People [in Turkey] don’t donate money because they don’t trust, so the transparency of the TOFD was important.” “The numbers are out there,” she says. The TOFD also makes it easy for people to make donations. As for the third criterion, funds raised by Adım Adım go toward the purchase of electric wheelchairs. People know exactly how much money a wheel chair costs and how many wheel chairs their efforts produce.
Why the name ‘Adım Adım’?
“It is modest,” explains Uçan, “Everyone can run; it’s not scary.” Erhart elaborates: “Raising money is not scary; we take small steps together and it grows. One gives five, another gives ten, and you raise 40,000.” Hence the slogan “Adım adım harekete geç” (Get a move on, step by step). Step by step, 62 runners training for the Antalya Marathon collected contributions from 475 donors, one by one. The result was electric wheelchairs for 35 individuals whose mobility would otherwise be severely restricted.
In the words of Süleyman Akbulut, the vice president of the TOFD: “These wheelchairs make it possible for people to move on their own [and] become independent. They can participate in society, get to their jobs and go to school.” Akbulut says Adım Adım is breaking new ground in Turkey: “In Turkey, as far as we know, there is no other such group gathering money in this way. For Turkey this is a first.”
Adım Adım’s goal is to have 5,000 donors collecting YTL 1 million within four years. It plans to establish groups in Turkey’s other major cities: İzmir, Ankara, Adana, Bursa, Antalya and Eskişehir. The group’s Saturday morning runs in the Belgrade Forest are open to all. For more information, visit www.adimadim.org.
* John Crofoot is a runner and freelance writer based in İstanbul.