Ahmet Yılmaz

“Social impact is present in almost every project at the Columbia Global Centers | Istanbul.”

COVER STORY: SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND INNOVATION

İpek Cem Taha is an RC Trustee and the director of the Columbia Global Centers | Istanbul. With her unique position to observe how both high school and higher education are evolving, RCQ asked her how social entrepreneurship factors at the Istanbul Center.

“Columbia Global Centers | Istanbul, in collaboration with the Columbia Organization of Rising Entrepreneurs (CORE) offers an annual five-day social entrepreneurship workshop for high school students. The workshop provides high school students with an introduction to social entrepreneurship and empowers them to create innovative solutions for their communities. It also enables them to examine themes of gender equality, entrepreneurship, innovation, leadership, design thinking, and sustainable development.

“You see that, at age 80, he has the same energy and determination, the same fierceness of focus.”

“Social impact is present in almost every project at the Istanbul Center. For example, we have been working with the Earth Institute at Columbia’s Climate School, on the Refugees Act and Communicate Health (REACH) Project, which aims to bridge the gap between health literacy and health care access among refugee, migrant and local youth communities living in Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan. One of the main leads of this project is Dr. Özge Karadağ RC 97, a senior research scholar at the Earth Institute.”