After the devastating 2011 Van Earthquake in Turkey, a disaster preparedness initiative entitled “Business Disaster Resiliency Program for Turkey” (or “Saglam KOBI” in Turkish) was developed by the World Economic Forum, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation, the UPS Foundation, IDEMA International Development Management Agency and UPS Turkey. The project aims to engage the private and public sector and civil society organizations to work together to identify best practices to enhance the resiliency of small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) in Turkey. The project which has been operating since 2013 is being managed by IDEMA.

Through this collective effort, Saglam KOBI aspires to provide SMEs with a suite of resources designed to assist businesses of all sizes. Businesses that only have a few minutes can access simple tips to prepare themselves and their staff for disasters, through reading the unique content on www.saglamkobi.com website, disaster preparedness checklist , 20 tips for preparedness , workbook 101 , Saglam KOBI also offers a toolkit available for free for businesses to create their own emergency action plans .

Saglam KOBI was publicly launched on September 17, 2013 In the first year, 12 training sessions were conducted with 246 businesses trained and more than 5,000 unique visitors to the website. Saglam KOBI has 19 partners who form the Advisory Board to advise the program and support where appropriate. Now in its sixth year, Saglam KOBI has scaled its impact through not only continuing the direct trainings for SMEs but now also offers Train the Trainer sessions to educate more trainers to help SMEs prepare an emergency action plan. To date, Saglam KOBI have reached out to more than 100.000 people. In addition, more than 3500 SMEs have gone through the training program and 25 trainings and train the trainer sessions have been conducted in 65 cities.

Saglam KOBI advisory board that is comprised of the representatives ofprivate and public sector, civil society, academia and internationalorganizations serve as an information and experience exchange platform forthe creation of a comprehensive disaster coordination plan.

In October and November 2018, Saglam KOBI conducted a research called“Disaster Resilience of SMEs in Turkey”. The research, in the 20th anniversaryof the Marmara Earthquake, is notable for setting forth the shorts and theneeds that we have in disaster preparation and resilience.

The project’s new agenda, namely “Disaster Map of SMEs”, set forth avision with the partnership of Allianz, Esri, UPS and IDEMA that wouldestablish incentives mechanism to encourage SMEs to take initiative indisaster preparation phase. In the context of this vision, partnerships with theleading actors in private sector have been secured, and an incentivemechanism on a digital platform has been developed.

Please visit this link for more detailed information on our program including the governance model, partnership strategy, and future vision.