Support To Student, Good Example To Farmer, Proud to Turkey – EXCLUSIVE NEWS

The Education, Geriatrics Ecological Agriculture Tourism (EGET) Foundation was established to ensure that low-income students are not cut off from university education. The founders, Özlem Uzman and Safai Özer, considered it essential for the Foundation to have a regular income for years to come. In line with this decision, they first purchased land in the Armutçuk neighborhood of the Muğla-Menteşe district and donated it to the Foundation in order to establish an agricultural enterprise.

Although EGET Foundation is a young foundation established in 2015, it still provides scholarships to 48 students. The number of scholars is not small. Contrary to popular belief, the total number of scholarship recipients of foundations and associations that have been collecting donations for years and have substantial endowments, as well as foundations established in the names of conglomerates and wealthy individuals, is in the thousands. EGET Foundation is an organization that allocates all its earnings to scholarships. Apart from employees, members of the Board of Directors receive no remuneration.

An exemplary sensitivity from EGET Foundation: Special software developed to identify scholarship recipients
EGET Foundation has created a special software to be as unbiased as possible in determining the scholarship recipients. This software, funded by the founders of the EGET Foundation, ranks applicants based on their answers to the questions asked in the application. After the computer ranking, students are asked to document their statements. The software can also be assigned certain priorities, if desired. For example, the EGET Foundation uses a ranking that gives an advantage to female students among equals. The software is currently unique in its advanced features. The Foundation is also open to similar organizations renting the program from them.

Income loss in the pandemic is high, the problem of low-income students staying in education is more than you think
Özlem Uzman, Founder of the Foundation and Chairperson of the Board of Directors of EGET, made the following assessment regarding their work: “The problem of young people who fail because they do not have enough financial support, who cannot start their education, who drop out of education, is much bigger than you think. Every year we experience great sadness during scholarship applications. We are a foundation that has not yet spread across the country and despite our limited announcements, more than twenty-five thousand young people have applied for scholarships in the last three years. As we see the answers to the questions in our software, we feel great sadness for the students we cannot help, for the students we cannot afford. The problem is deeper than you think. This year, workers, farmers, low-income earners have suffered a huge loss of income due to the pandemic. The unemployment rate has risen. We are afraid that in the coming years, there will be many students who will not be able to go to university and will abandon their education. Our experience shows this. Every year, tens of thousands of students drop out of university education simply because of financial constraints. According to Parliamentary data, the number of university students who dropped out in 2017-2018, including open education, was 408 thousand. There are certainly very successful students among these young people. This is an unacceptable situation. We all have a responsibility to keep our young people in educational institutions.”

Safai Özer, Founder of the Foundation and Chairman of the Board of Trustees of EGET, made the following assessments: “EGET Foundation transfers all its revenues to education scholarships. While we strive to generate income, we develop methods to increase the income of our country’s farmers. While we were saying “Lavender agriculture…”, through EGET TEN, we gave one of the best examples of agriculture-based industry; we started to produce cosmetic products. Now our olive oil has received an international award; we are proud of Turkey. All income of EGET Foundation is allocated to scholarships. Every contribution to our foundation, every product purchased, provides support for students to hold on to life. While we are taking initiatives to generate income for EGET Foundation, we are also being as useful as possible for producers outside of ourselves. Last year, during the lavender flowering period, there were more than six hundred hives of mobile beekeepers around the EGET Foundation Armutçuk Agricultural Enterprise. We have proven that lavender can also be used in the Aegean and Mediterranean coastal cities. Aromatic plant production enterprises and cooperatives were established in the region following our example. The Metropolitan Municipality felt the need to establish an aromatic oil distillation center. With our products, we were able to demonstrate that natural lavender oil can be transformed into very high quality cosmetic products, thus increasing the income of the producers many times over.”

EGET Food: Award-winning olive oil from Japan
EGET Foundation’s agricultural, cosmetic and food products meet with consumers both in its own online store and in large virtual stores with the slogan “From nature to you, from you to education”. On EGET Food pages, there are lavender honey, puren honey and EGET Foundation’s EGET KUZLUK special pressed gourmet olive oils produced with good agricultural principles. In just the second year of its transition to marketing, EGET Foundation has given our country an honor in olive oil: At Olive Japan 2020, the world’s most prestigious and international competition for early harvest cold-pressed olive oils, EGET KUZLUK gourmet olive oil was awarded a silver medal among 700 companies and more than two thousand brands participating in the competition. Participating brands from Turkey won a total of 19 medals this year. At EGET Gıda (eget.com.tr/store), puren and lavender honeys and EGET KUZLUK olive oil await those who enjoy gourmet flavors. EGET Agriculture sells vermicompost for good and ecological agriculture, lavender seedlings, flower seedlings and quality peat.

Lavender scented scholarship
In order to add additional value to the land during the development phase of the truffle, EGET Foundation planted lavender among the oak saplings. This proved that lavender can be grown in this coastal region. Lavender saplings were sold to farmers who wanted them, and scholarship income was obtained by selling the lavender obtained. Another output of lavender farming was honey. Lavender honey was obtained from hives placed around the land. Regional beekeepers also brought their hives to the region for the second year in a row. It was determined that many beekeepers in the region brought a total of around 600 hives. EGET Foundation increased the number of scholarships with the income from lavender honey produced in its own facility.

Contributing to Turkey’s domestic production with lavender oil: The birth of the EGET TEN brand
Turkey is a geography where almost all agricultural products and aromatic plants grow. Surprisingly, close to 300 million dollars worth of cosmetic plant oils are imported annually, with a deficit of around 170 million dollars.
EGET Foundation had lavender oil produced in the distillation facility established by Muğla Metropolitan Municipality in order to transform the lavender oil into value-added products with higher returns. Instead of selling lavender oil as a raw material, he looked for ways to produce cosmetic products with it. In this regard, successful results were obtained with trials conducted in an experienced industrial organization approved by the Ministry of Health. Cologne, liquid soap, lavender oil tonic, shampoo, handmade solid soap, lavender water under the brand EGET TEN, after obtaining all kinds of certificates of the products including the Ministry of Health, were offered for sale in the online store of the Foundation (eget.com.tr). In the second year of the products, Turkey’s largest online stores started selling EGET products.