46
Startups supported
8000
Young people impacted
100
Partners collaborated with
26000
Passionate followers
THE CHALLENGE
Together with Zorlu Holding, one of Türkiye’s biggest conglomerates, and S360, Türkiye’s leading strategic sustainability consultancy firm, we designed and launched imece, Türkiye’s first social innovation platform and social entrepreneurship movement.
THE TRANSFORMATION APPROACH
The co-design process for developing and implementing imece was conducted with multiple stakeholders from various fields, including academia, NGOs, public and private sectors, as well as international collaborators such as OpenIDEO, Stanford d.school, B Lab, and frogDesign.
ATÖLYE took on the role of co-founder during the first three years of imece and oversaw responsibilities from designing the initial concept to piloting programs, from recruiting the founding team to creating a blueprint for scale. We created digital and brand assets as well as an adaptable strategy based on the changing needs of the innovation sector, always taking on a “think global, act local” mindset.
THE IMPACT
In its eight years, imece has shared 200K USD+ funds with social entrepreneurs (over 6 million TL) and engaged 8000+ youth through its open innovation lab, supporting over 40 start-ups while building an audience of 26,000+ passionate followers through events and summits.
In 2023, they focused on disaster relief due to the earthquake that hit Türkiye and Syria. imece collaborated with ATÖLYE to organize post-disaster workshops which brought together over 100 individuals from 60 organizations kick-starting 20 projects—one turning into an NGO, Saha. They organized a “DisasterTech” hackathon with ReFi Türkiye. 55 applicants came together to co-design rapid solutions for disaster relief.
As of 2024, imece has expanded its network further, collaborating with B Lab Europe to host the first B Corp Boot Camp in Türkiye with ATÖLYE as community partner. Through these efforts, imece is actively supporting the growth of the B Corp Community in Türkiye.
THE COMMUNITY LENS
imece’s founding rests on the spirit of bringing together social impact practitioners with individuals and organizations from a multitude of sectors to enable cross-industry collaborations. This holistic system has lead to increased capacity building as well as the right environments for impact entrepreneurs to flourish.
Since imece’s design and development kick-off back in 2016 until today, we have continuously collaborated with the core team and key stakeholders to shape its future. We have redesigned and co-built a more sustainable business model for imece by diversifying its incubation programs and partnership structures.
In 2021, imece held imece summit: Shaping the Futures in partnership with Zorlu Holding, ATÖLYE, B Lab Europe, BMW Foundation, S360, SIX, and other local partners with 70% of global speakers. The following is a report of their findings that came out during the summit.
The Full Story
The beginnings
Together with Zorlu Holding, one of Türkiye’s biggest conglomerates, and S360, Türkiye’s leading strategic sustainability consultancy firm, we designed and launched imece.
imece is a social innovation platform and movement that brings together a multidisciplinary community to create innovative, impactful, and SDG focused projects. Its main beneficiaries are young people and start-ups within the sectors of mobility, education, climate, gender equality, accessibility, and circularity.
In Turkish, the word imece means “a community of people pulling together their resources towards collaboratively solving a challenge.” This is not unlike the philosophy of Ubuntu which values collectivism over individualism.
The co-design process for developing and implementing imece was conducted with multiple stakeholders from various fields, including academia, NGOs, public and private sectors, as well as international collaborators such as OpenIDEO, Stanford d.school, B Lab, and frogDesign. To this day, co-design sits at the heart of how imece works; it sees itself as a bridge between the private sector and the NGO sector. Since its founding, UNDP has also become a platform partner for imece.
Concepts of social innovation or social entrepreneurship are increasingly becoming paramount for tackling the ecological, economic, and social challenges that face the globe. It is now clear that governments, the public sector, academia, or NGOs are not equipped to solve these challenges within their domains alone. They are in need of a multidisciplinary, collaborative approach. At the same time, expectations from for-profit corporations are rapidly shifting towards more impact-driven work.
Türkiye and the surrounding region have challenges such as access to relevant education, gender equality, accessibility, environmental sustainability, displaced populations, mobility, etc. These grand challenges offer opportunities for social entrepreneurs—people who are passionate about these challenges and view entrepreneurship as a way to scale their impact potential.
This is why imece exists: to support social entrepreneurs to scale their impact and achieve success through an empowering holistic ecosystem approach, providing them with knowledge, mentorship support, grant opportunities, measurable impact reports, content production capabilities while generating locally relevant content and building talent capacity.
Focus
imece’s efforts are centered around: Capacity Building, Community Building, and Incubation. One of the things that sets imece apart is the fact that it does all of the above in a systematic and holistic fashion, focusing on all three pillars at the same time.
In 2018, imece co-hosted SIX Wayfinder Istanbul with 500+ participants from 30 countries. In 2021, imece held imece summit: Shaping the Futures in partnership with Zorlu Holding, ATÖLYE, B Lab Europe, BMW Foundation, S360, SIX, and other local partners with 70% of global speakers.
imece has also been involved in mobilizing organizations during times of crisis: as was seen during COVID, the wildfires of 2020–2021, and the earthquake that hit Türkiye and Syria last year.
As of 2024, imece has expanded its network further, collaborating with B Lab Europe to host the first B Corp Boot Camp in Türkiye with ATÖLYE as community partner. Through these efforts, imece is actively supporting the growth of the B Corp Community in Türkiye.
Towards social impact
In its eight years, imece has shared 200K USD+ funds with social entrepreneurs (over 6 million TL) and engaged 8000+ youth through its open innovation lab, supporting over 40 start-ups while building an audience of 26000+ passionate followers through events and summits.
The last 12 months, they focused on disaster relief due to the earthquake that hit Türkiye and Syria. imece collaborated with ATÖLYE to organize post-disaster workshops which brought together over 100 individuals from 60 organizations kick-starting 20 projects—one turning into an NGO, Saha. They organized a “DisasterTech” hackathon with ReFi Türkiye. 55 applicants came together to co-design rapid solutions for disaster relief.
imece founded “Renewable Energy Academy” with Boğaziçi University and Sabancı. Over 2000+ students were educated to nurture female talent in the renewable energy sector.
They became local partners of Village Capital and hosted the Istanbul Summit, bringing together 47 mentors and 25 teams from the MENA, Asia, Africa regions.
The future
ATÖLYE continues to collaborate with imece to shape its future. We have redesigned and co-built a sustainable business model for them by diversifying its incubation programs and partnership structures.
We oversaw responsibilities such as designing the initial concept, piloting programs, recruiting the founding team, and creating a blueprint for scale. We created digital and brand assets as well as an adaptable strategy based on the changing needs of the innovation sector, always taking on a “think global, act local” mindset.
It is the first time in Türkiye that design thinking methodologies were used within the social innovation ecosystem; imece was able to pass these on thanks to our Train the Trainer programs.
Projects that stand out: Toyi, award-winning children’s toy company, Kızlar Sahada, an organization empowering girls and women of all ages with football, and Ecording, a company developing ecological solutions against the climate crisis. They have also translated all impact-focused sites on Wikipedia to Turkish.
Currently, imece is integrating emerging technologies into the sector, demonstrating the power of innovation for web3 and AI for good.
We are applying for this project eight years on because these sorts of platforms go through the phases of seeding, growing, and flourishing, and what we see now is that imece has created momentum; it is the leading social innovation platform in Türkiye. Longevity and self-sustaining systems are important for these platforms. We’ve only seen the impact increase over time, and Türkiye’s atmosphere of crisis has led to imece becoming even more relevant.
Project Team
Project Team
Ahmet Alpat, Atılım Şahin, Aylin Durmaz, Ayşesu Çelik, Bala Gürcan, Ceylan Uşaki Erali, Dara Kılıçoğlu, Ebru Boyacı, Emre Erbirer, Engin Ayaz, Mert Çetinkaya, Mertcan Avcı, Murathan Sırakaya, Nazlı Cangönül, Nesile Yalçın, Özge Aytan, Serdar Paktin, Şevval Ceylan, Tolga Dizmen, Ufuk Barış Mutlu
Project Lead
Kerem Alper
Community
Bigumigu (Content Provider), Erdinç Akkaya (Software), Gülin Ölçer (Coach), Ömer Hacıömeroğlu (Presentation Flow Design)
imece Team
Buğra Çelik, Duygu Kambur, Fırat Okucu, Öykü Attila, Seda Karaca, Tuğçe Akbulut, Uğur Orak, Zeynep Çelik