Raindrop Foundation Central Texas

operated exclusively for educational, cultural and charitable purposes. The Foundation aims to cultivate friendship and promote understanding of diverse cultures through its offering unique services to the community. We strive to establish bridges between the Turkish and American cultures and communities by providing easily accessible educational, social, and cultural services. Next to being a home to Turkish-Americans, the Foundation addresses their social and cultural needs and helps them integrate into this multicultural society better. The mission of the Foundation is to introduce Turkish culture into American society and cultivate friendship and promote the understanding of diverse cultures through its unique services to the community, through dialog and cooperation. Services are provided with the intention of contributing to global peace at the grassroots level by sharing Turkey’s heritage of tolerance and understanding.

Educational Services

In the academic area, the Foundation seeks to contribute to an increasingly rich and multicultural American education for its community members in a broad variety of ways. The Foundation intends to provide expansive educational programming in the future, but intends to support education in the community in the following ways:

• Aiding schools (including universities, community colleges, and secondary schools) in establishing Turkish language programs. The Foundation sponsors “for credit” Turkish courses at the University of Texas at Austin. The Foundation provides support to schools ranging from finding qualified instructors to furnishing schools with materials.

• The Foundation aims to help establish study abroad programs in Turkey. As a benefit of its location, Turkey offers a rich history and culture to its visitors. Based on schools’ goals, the Foundation can provide assistance in accommodation, food, transportation and contact with local families, schools and other institutions.

• The Foundation welcomes field trips, where students can experience presentations about Turkey’s history and culture. Visitors will have the opportunity to taste samples from Turkish cuisine. This is an educational and fun field trip opportunity for schools.

Cultural Services

The Foundation seeks to offer cultural services in a wide variety of opportunities to both its community and the general public. Some of these opportunities would include:

• Cuisine classes: Introducing culinary culture developed from the era of the Ottoman Empire. These classes are open to community members of all ages and are great to take as a family or with friends. With its experience in cuisine classes and experienced instructors, the Foundation can also provide culinary courses or after school cuisine programs at schools.

• Art classes: the Foundation can introduce traditional Turkish and Ottoman arts such as Ebru. Ebru is the name of Ottoman water marbling art, which is based on transferring artistic designs created on water to paper, giving it a magical sense.

• Turkish cultural festivals: Every year each Raindrop branch organizes a traditional Turkish Cultures Festival where a kaleidoscope of varying people from the Turkish world is showcased. Not only an educational adventure for those in attendance and involved, the Turkish Cultures Festival is an entertaining event that joins together international communities. The event includes performances from the famous Ottoman Army Band, music groups, and folk dances as well as handcrafts, calligraphy and of course delicious world renown Turkish cuisine. The Foundation collaborates with the universities and K-12 schools to feature activities that contribute to the diverse culture of America.

• Turkish Language and Culture Olympiad: One of the main events that Raindrop Foundation organizes is the annual Turkish Language and Culture Olympiad. The Foundation values language learning and organized this event to motivate students to learn a second (or third!) language. Turkish is listed as one of the critical languages under the National Security Language Initiative (NSLI). NSLI is an interagency initiative of the Departments of State, Education, and Defense, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. The initiative is designed to dramatically increase the number of Americans learning critical need foreign languages such as Turkish, Chinese, and Persian through new and expanded programs that begin in kindergarten and run throughout university and into the workforce. In order to encourage multilingualism in students as early as possible,

Raindrop has been organizing the Turkish Language and Culture Olympiad with an increasing participation each year.

• The Foundation contributes to a colorful society by organizing, sponsoring and hosting cultural and social events such as Nevruz picnics, traditional dinners, Turkish coffee nights, International Women’s day, soccer games, Noah’s pudding days, art exhibits Whirling Dervishes’ performances-- all to establish and enhance friendship ties with our neighbors and local communities and form a culture of “living together”. The Foundation ties together the vision, values, and cooperative spirit of the different communities in the southwestern states. The Foundation is committed to strengthening the bridge that connects the Turkish and American cultures.

Charitable Efforts

The Foundation also helps those in need, and hopes to assist with all forms of aid within our means: people such as the homeless, destitute, widowers, patients, orphans, veterans, and those affected by catastrophes such as earthquakes, floods, fires, etc. These efforts aim to develop and strengthen social responsibility, solidarity, aid and consciousness and contribute to improvement of the socioeconomic level of society. The Foundation hopes to run projects in collaboration with health fairs. Families would receive free or reduced cost immunizations and health screenings as well as free diabetes, blood pressure and cholesterol tests, along with free dental screenings.

The Foundation also hopes to directly support a variety of public charities. During difficult economic times, the need for nonprofit services rises, while funding decreases. Studies such as the Nationwide Research Collaborative’s Nonprofit Fundraising Study indicate that 65% of charities reported an increase in demand for services last year, but saw a decrease infundraising results. The founders of the Foundation recognized that many nonprofit organizations struggled to keep up with demand for services. This is why the Foundation will host a variety of community programming in order to provide funds to public charities.