Area served Turkey & United States Founder Sinan Yaman | Website www.yga.org.tr Founded 2002 | |
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Focus Socially responsible leadership Location Sıraselviler Cad. No:57 Kat: 3 Taksim / Istanbul, Turkey Key people Sinan Yaman (Chairman and Founder)
Gökhan Meriçliler (Co-President)
Enis Güray (Co-President) Slogan An extraordinary leadership journey Mission To select, educate, train and inspire creative innovative and socially responsible leaders Profiles | ||
Young Guru Academy (YGA) Dream Partners Foundation is an international non-governmental organization (NGO) that works on socially responsible leadership, founded in 2002 by Young Business Guru of Turkey, Sinan Yaman. YGA states its vision is to encourage tomorrow's leaders to deepen, enrich and inspire their collective creativity and unleash their social innovative potential and its mission is to select, educate, train and inspire creative innovative and socially responsible leaders.
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The organization is based in Istanbul, Turkey and YGA, Inc. USA is incorporated in North Carolina, United States, IRS ruling on 501(c)(3), non-profit status is pending.
YGA Leadership Program
YGA Leadership Program for its volunteers consists of 3 steps :
- LDP: Leader Discovery Program : Seminars and Project Workshop.
- LEP: Leader Educating / Training Program : Leadership School in Istanbul and Leadership Camp/ Conference in United States.
- LCP: Leader Development Program : Leader Coaching and Leadership Workshop.
YGA’s program for training socially responsible leaders begins with a leadership conference which takes place at the Lutfi Kirdar Congress Center in Istanbul. Every year, only 2000 leader candidates are accepted out of nearly 20,000 applicants via YGA’s website.
Following the conference, the candidates submit a comprehensive written application evaluated by the YGA selection board who then selects 400 candidates for a face to face interview and selected candidates take part in a social responsibility project developed and implemented by YGA called Read-Think-Share. The selected volunteers join the Read-Think-Share program as moderators in the YGA libraries in disadvantaged elementary schools all around Turkey for a year. A number of candidates are selected to attend the YGA International Leadership School
Upon the completion of the YGA International Leadership School, a group of volunteers is selected to attend the YGA United States Leadership Camp which takes place in New York City, Washington, D.C., Raleigh and Figure Eight Island.
During the YGA leadership program the young leaders learn through YGA lecturers such as İlber Ortaylı, İzzet Garih, Ali Sabancı, Prof. Aydın Uğur, Hüsnü Özyeğin, Ali Koç, Çetin Yüceuluğ, Sinan Yaman, Tınaz Titiz, Ümran Beba, Prof. Erhan Erkut, Muzaffer Akpınar, Scott Berrie, Jim Rasmussen, Yuri Khlebnikov and Virginia Foxx as well as visiting different NGOs.
After the completion of the America Leadership Camp, the lifelong training of YGA graduates continues with a leadership development program called Leader Mentoring. Every month, graduates of YGA leadership program meet in a different city and organize activities and in-depth interviews with leaders from all fields to gain new perspectives on leadership development skills and ideas to further their projects.
Projects
The following are the projects, created and implemented by volunteers: Read-Think-Share, Empowerment of Visually Impaired Youth, Global Servant Leaders, Brain Migration to Disadvantaged Schools, Rising Stars Leadership Program, Change Makers, Leadership Camp for Rural School Teachers and Dream Partnership with Boarding Schools through the Read-Think-Share Project. As of 2009, throughout Turkey, 87 YGA Libraries have been serving the potential future leaders through the implementation of YGA’s Read-Think–Share Project.
Young Guru Academy was one of the FIELD (Field Immersion Experiences for Leadership Development) Global partners of Harvard Business School in 2012.