Education

Center of Excellence in Finance (CEF)

With its internationalization goal and its AASCB accreditation, which is one of the world’s most prestigious accreditations, Sabanci University, which was featured in the Times Higher Education (THE) 100 Under 50 University Rankings, established a center at the start of 2016 called the Center of Excellence in Finance (CEF). One of its founding sponsors is Akbank, who was identified as “Turkey’s Most Valuable Brand” in Brand Finance’s “Turkey’s Most Valuable Brand” study; the center was established with the aim of serving as a bridge between academia, the finance sector, the real sector and policy makers. To this aim, CEF aims to convert fundamental knowledge into practices that can be applied in real life scenarios, by bringing together academicians, actors in the financial market and investors.

The Center’s advisory board consists of globally acclaimed members from these three different spheres, and they advise on program development, certification programs, conferences and workshops. The CEF aims to connect academicians, professionals, policy makers and students, by organizing certification programs, seminar series, workshops, comprehensive conferences and studies. In addition to all these activities, the CEF aims to produce and distribute high quality research output in the field of financial economics. The published research reports, as well as studies that are published in teaching staff academic journals, study articles and regularly updated research data, can be accessed via the CEF’s official web site. For detailed information you can visit their website cef.sabanciuniv.edu.

Akbank Thinking Club

Akbank formed the Akbank Thinking Club in 2008 with the aim of thinking together with young people, who are among the most important stakeholders in continuous development and innovation, and of creating value together for Turkey’s future.Open to applications from all third year university students across Turkey, the club is joined by academically successful, innovative new students with strong communcations skills every year. Our members produce projects based on that year’s theme. The outputs are evaluated by a special jury. The member who produces the best work is awarded a scholarship for Harvard University Summer School.

As well as this, we maintain communications with all our members within a continuously growing network.

Akbank Thinking Club offers young people, who will be the innovative power of tomorrow with the experience they acquire today, the opportunity to develop their potential by providing them with a platform to discover their creativity.

Akbank Children: Heroes of the Economy

At Akbank we support projects that that contribute to increased financial literacy and encourage saving. Pursuant to this, Akbank’s Children: Heroes of the Economyd Project was conceived in 2012. We aim to contribute towards primary school children becoming intelligent consumers, and to create consciousness and awareness with regards to saving. We are trying to draw attention to the issue of “Saving” with the box game, web site, posters, certificates and the Akbank Ladybug Coin Bank “Kumbirik” which we gifted to all pupils who participated in the activities.The Akbank Children’s Theater opened in the 2014-2015 school year with a new play that incorporates messages about saving.

Written by Rachel Barnett, the play is called “The Family Tree”, and throughout its Anatolia Tour, which included the six provinces of Trabzon, Ordu, Samsun, Amasya, Ankara and Kayseri, as well as at the Gaziantep Children’s Festivals it later featured at, it provided positive messages to primary school children about saving and family values. We hope that the Akbank Ladybug Coin Banks, which we presented to children both at our school activities as well as after the play, will be a good friend to them throughout their savings journey. Carried out with the support of Akbank Volunteers, our Akbank Children: Heroes of the Economy project was awarded the title of Best Volunteer Project of 2015 in the Awards from the Heart awards program, which is organized every year by the Private Sector Volunteers Society.

For detailed information you can visit the www.ekonomininkahramanicocuklar.com website.

Sabanci University

Sabani University was founded with the mission to nurture self-confident individuals with an international level of competency, equipped with the ability to think critically and independently, and with an awareness of social responsibility; as well as to contribute to the development of science and technology on a global scale, and disseminate the resulting knowledge to the rest of society. Akbank has made direct cash donations of 74 million US dollars to Sabanci University since its inception. Since 2005, dividends gained from the Akbank shares donated to Sabanci University at its inception had reached 7.3 million US dollars by 2015.

The Family-Owned Business Academy

The Akbank Family-Owned Business Academy aims to increase the competitive power of family-owned businesses, which comprise a significant portion of Turkey’s economy, and ensure that they grow healthily, as well as contribute to their sustainability and globalization efforts by offering a different vision for their concept of management.The Academy’s experts provide information on a broad range of topics like growth and globalization, strategic management, business plan development and implementation, good management practices, law, human resources management and financial management, helping businesses take an appraising look at themselves and their organizations.

As well as this, talks are arranged with valuable managers who are leaders in their field, and the workings of corporate structures can be observed on field trips to Sabanci companies. Those who attend the Akbank Family-Owned Business Academy are granted a certificate from Sabanci University’s Executive Development Unit (EDU). If participants wish, at the end of the program they can benefit from discounted services from our program partners, including advice on the actions they need to take for the institutionalization of their firm and the formation of a family constitution.

Donate a Smile!

In our 70th anniversary, Turkey smiled; these smiles from all over Turkey have transformed into smiles of 50,000 children from all quarters inof the country.

On the anniversary of our bank's foundation date, 30th January 2018, we wanted to meet the book and stationery needs submitted through Necessity Map Platform by the teachers all over the country.

To this end, we invited Turkey to smile, driven by the motto "Your Smile, Our Support for Education as Akbank" for our social responsibility project titled "Donate a smile!"

Every smile uploaded on birgulusun70.com (youronesmile70.com) or photos of smiling faces shared on social media accounts with the #Birgülüşün70 (#Youronesmile) hashtag have transformed into contribution to education.

The book and stationery demands entered in the Necessity Map Platform have begun to be distributed to those in need with the opening of schools. The mentioned needs of 50,000 students from 141 schools – mostly village schools - from 50 different provinces have been supplied. The schools dispersed throughout 50 provinces - from Adana to Adıyaman, from Erzurum to Şanlıurfa, from Şırnak to Van – were reached out and their demands were fulfilled. In locations where there are no commercial cargo services, the required shipment process was undertaken by Akbank employees and the schools were directly visited for delivery by them.

At the end of our project, smiles from all over Turkey have transformed into smiles of children from all quarters inof our country.

Therefore, Turkey joined hands and made 50,000 of our children smile.