After the devastating 2011 Van Earthquake in Turkey, a disaster preparedness initiative entitled “Business Disaster Resilience Program for Turkey” (or “Saglam KOBI” in Turkish) was developed by the World Economic Forum, Corporate Social Responsibility Association of Turkey (CSR Turkey), the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation, and The UPS Foundation.

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. 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, and 20 tips for preparedness. Saglam KOBI also offers a toolkit available for free for businesses to create their disaster action and emergency plan and take steps to meet AFAD’s regulations.

With the recent urge of COVID-19, Saglam KOBI project has adopted the “SK 2.0 vision” to design, deliver and monitor holistic business continuity program to foster the disaster, social, digital, economic and social resilience of SMEs.  In this journey, Saglam KOBI prepared new training materials, designed and disseminated Monthly Bulletins, conducted research on business resilience, formed disaster response mechanisms, built local partnerships and developed the “ Resilient SMEs Map” in Turkey.  

With the project that has organized more than 100 trainings in 25 provinces since 2013, we have reached more than 3500 SMEs and more than 100,000 people throughout Turkey.

After the February 6 Kahramanmaraş earthquake, the Saglam SME project, under the coordination of the Regional Recovery and Development Centers (RRDC) established in partnership with the Needs Map, Adana Chamber of Commerce, Gaziantep Chamber of Commerce and UNDP, to carry out activities and projects for the reconstruction and sustainable development needs of the provinces affected by the earthquake. It continues its activities for disaster resilience, focusing on the earthquake region.