Sabancı Foundation Board of Trustees Chair Güler Sabancı, in her March 8 International Women's Day message, pointed out the young women who are neither in education nor in employment (NEET), which concerns 3,2 million young women in Turkey. Sabancı included the following statements in his message, in which he touched upon the importance of cooperation and joint work:
“As Sabancı Foundation, as a result of our research and observations, we see that one of the biggest problems of our country is the employment of young women who are neither in education nor in employment. As we always emphasize, access to education and employment is both a fundamental right and a prerequisite for development. In this context, as the Foundation, we have been carrying out important work for 50 years to ensure equal opportunities for women and girls. The Young Women Building Their Future project, which we launched in 2022, is one of the very important projects we have implemented based on our experiences in order to support the participation of young women between the ages of 18-29 in economic and social life. Our main goal is to draw attention to the NEET young women issue and create an agenda on this issue in Turkey. We believe that we have achieved this to some extent as a result of intense effort and dedication since the first day of the project. The rate of NEET young women, which was 50,5 percent when we started the project, has dropped to 45 percent today. The number of NEET young women, whose number was 3,5 million, decreased to 3,2 million. Although the result seems positive, unfortunately, we still rank first among OECD countries in the rate of NEET young women. We have a long way to go in this regard. We are together with our strong partners such as the Ministry of Family and Social Services, the Ministry of Labor and Social Security and the United Nations Development Program in the Young Women Building Their Future project. Because we fully believe in the power of cooperation in solving social problems. It is not possible to solve social problems from today to tomorrow. “I invite everyone to be part of the solution to this problem to turn the tables.”