Tofaş undertakes long-term projects that invest in future generations, promote inclusiveness and diversity, and protect the cultural heritage.

SOCIAL INVESTMENTS

Believing that social vigor is the most essential element of business world success, Tofaş focuses on social responsibility projects capable of supporting social development multidimensionally, of contributing to the national economy, and of creating added value for society as a whole. Manifesting its contributions to society along multiple axes, Tofaş undertakes long-term projects that invest in future generations, promote inclusiveness and diversity, and protect the cultural heritage.

Tofaş’s efforts on behalf of social responsibility are grounded in United Nations Sustainable Development Goals as guided by the needs, expectations, and priorities of the localities in which they are undertaken. Tofaş monitors the progress of all projects that it undertakes in light of measurable medium and long-term targets that it sets for them.

As a way of enhancing a project’s effectiveness and encouraging practical-solution development, Tofaş encourages its own employees, dealers, and suppliers as well as other stakeholders to play a role in dealing particularly with its environmental and social aspects. To the same end, it also enters into strong collaborations with NGOs, international agencies and organizations, universities, local governments, and private individuals with expertise in the project’s subject matter.

Tofaş strongly believes that contributing to society is one of the responsibilities of being a good corporate citizen. As such, it supports the community through socially beneficial charitable donations and sponsorships.

INVESTING IN FUTURE GENERATIONS

Tofaş aims to foster a sense of culture and an outlook among children and youths that will help them be successful in all aspects of life and to promote such values in society at large by creating communal equality of opportunity in sport and education not just in Bursa where its manufacturing operations are based but elsewhere as well.

TOFAŞ SPORTS CLUB

The systematic, infrastructure-focused efforts of the Tofaş Sports Club have nurtured many new basketball players both for Bursa and for the country as a whole ever since the club was founded in 1974. The club supports both rearing healthy new generations and improving the quality of people’s lives in general by giving all youngsters an equal opportunity to take part in sports activities.

Players and coaches who had their start at the Tofaş Sports Club have gone on to achieve success in sport both nationally and internationally. The club continues to pursue its goals both of making Bursa a city renowned for basketball and of being a model sports club in which its members and supporters can take pride. The Tofaş Sports Club’s priorities are to deploy its infrastructure assets to rear athletes, to manage its Basketball A Team, and to carry out social responsibility projects.

Infrastructure

To date, more than 5,200 athletes and 420 coaches (770 of them national-team qualifiers) have been members of the Tofaş Sports Club.

Basketball A Team

Over the years since its formation, the Tofaş Sports Club’s men’s basketball team has won 1 President’s, 2 Basketball Super League, and 3 Turkish League cups. As of 2023, about 800 athletes have played on the Tofaş Men’s Basketball A Team. During the 2023-2024 season, the team is competing in Basketball Super League and Basketball Champions League games.

Promoting equality of opportunity in sport and sport culture

As summed up in its “Basketball City Bursa” motto, the aims of the Tofaş Sports Club are to provide all youngsters with the opportunities they need to take part in sport and also to promote equality of opportunity in sport and sport culture not just in its home province of Bursa but throughout the entire country. To leverage its effectiveness, the club cooperates with NGOs, local governments, and national and international organizations and also carries out projects capable of benefitting society as a whole.

As of end-2023, 15 Tofaş Basketball Schools based in 10 cities were providing basketball skills training resources and playing opportunities to 3,500 children.

Last year Tofaş Sports Club branches based in the Hope Town container cities set up in earthquake-affected areas by Koç Holding and Koç Group companies in coordination with AFAD began providing basketball training and playing resources for the children living in them in a joint Tofaş Sports Club and Turkish Basketball Coaches Association project. As of end-2023, 150 children were benefitting from such training under the supervision of local coaches in the provinces of Hatay, Adıyaman, and Malatya.

Launched in 2016, the goals of the Tofaş Next Generation Project are to provide all children with an equal opportunity to take part in sports and to foster attitudes and points of view among children that will help them be successful in all aspects of life. The Tofaş Next Generation Project is based on a training and implementation model that focuses on the trainer-family-child triangle in order to foster a generation whose members truly believe that every child should have an equal chance to play basketball. Minor and junior teams formed from among selected children continue their training at the Mustafa V. Koç Sports Complex. The members of the Tofaş Sports Club’s junior teams consist largely of youngsters who have undergone Next Generation Tofaş training. Other aspects of the project include an e-learning system set up to provide distance learning resources for coaches and family members, street tournaments conducted to promote basketball among the public at large, and science and creative drama workshops.

As of 2023, e-learning system training videos had been viewed a total of 250 thousand times and 10,500 children and 5,000 parents had been reached through 15 basketball schools located in Bursa province townships.

In 2019 the Tofaş Sports Club began establishing basketball courts in different parts of Bursa city as part of Tofaş’s Neighborhood Pitches Project. As of 2023, 46 of these pitches had been created in the city and are being provided with seasonal upkeep and maintenance services.

The Tofaş Basketball Team plays its home games at the Nilüfer Tofaş Gymnasium, another Tofaş facility that contributes to the social life of the city of Bursa and its people. The premises and facilities of the Tofaş Sports Club Mustafa V. Koç Sports Complex, are available not only to Tofaş personnel but also to Bursa’s amateur sports teams and athletes since 2016. With 5,800 m2 of space, this complex contains three basketball courts, a fitness center, and a fully-equipped sports rehabilitation center capable of providing whatever forms of physical therapy athletes may require.

TOFAŞ SCIENCE HIGH SCHOOL

Located in the Demirtaş Organized Industrial Zone in Bursa’s Nilüfer township, instruction at Tofaş Science High School began in the 2014-2015 academic year. Tofaş provides the school with material support for the development of its instructors, students, and physical facilities. It also provides scholarship support for successful graduates who go on to university.

Initiated with Tofaş support at Tofaş Science High School, the “Innovation Workshop” aims to support the instruction of well-educated young people who will shape the future of automotive and engineering field in Türkiye and serve as its leaders. Having identified it as a “Project That Inspires”, the Ministry of Education has decided to expand the Innovation Workshop program to embrace all science high schools. This support is being provided with the goal of making the Tofaş Innovation Workshop one of the top three STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics) workshops in Europe by 2030.

Tofaş Science High School’s curriculum gives attention to gender-equality and to career-choice awareness as a way of encouraging female students to go into engineering and thereby increasing the breadth and depth of its recruitment pool.

PROTECTING THE CULTURAL HERITAGE

Tofaş Bursa Anatolian Museum, the first and only one of its kind, has received about 1.2 million visitors to date.

TOFAŞ MUSEUM OF CARS AND ANATOLIAN CARRIAGES AND TOFAŞ ART GALLERY

Located in Bursa’s Umurbey district, the Tofaş Museum of Cars and Anatolian Carriages is a private museum focusing on the Anatolian transport heritage. A former silk-weaving mill that used to be here was restored and converted for use as a museum by Tofaş. On display at the museum is a historical panorama of the history of human transport in Anatolia beginning with a wheel that is 2,600 years old and extending to the present day with examples of Tofaş-built motor vehicles.

The museum opened its doors in 2003 and has received about 1.2 million visitors since then.

Located within the same grounds as the museum is the Tofaş Art Gallery housed in the Umurbey Hammam, the original construction of which dates to 1430. To date the gallery has hosted six exhibitions, the most recent of which is “The Poise Of The Steelyard: Scales, Weights & Measuring Instruments”, a show with past and present-day examples of such equipment. The museum’s cafeteria, Fayton Cafe, is open to museum visitors as well as to the public. The museum’s gardens are planted with more than 50 different species and serve as a venue for concerts and culture & art events throughout the year.

On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Republic of Türkiye, the Tofaş Bursa Museum of Cars and Anatolian Carriages last year hosted an exhibition of photographs and newspaper clippings documenting annual public celebrations of Republic Day in the city of Bursa between 1930 and 1970. Mounted in the former Mancınıkhane section of the museum, the exhibition opened on 22 September and closed on 1 December 2023.

PAMUKKALE HIERAPOLIS ARCHAEOLOGICAL EXCAVATIONS

Since 2005 Tofaş has been supporting archaeological excavations at Hierapolis, the extensive ruins of one of the five biggest ancient cities in Türkiye. Coterminous with the Pamukkale thermal zone, both Hierapolis and Pamukkale were declared UNESCO World Heritage sites in 1988. Excavation work, which is being overseen by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism and the Denizli governor’s office, is being carried out by an international team of about seventy archaeologists, architects, restorers, conservators, and other experts mainly from Italy and Türkiye.

Among the other significant unearthed in Hierapolis remains that have been unearthed are two necropolises, baths, a basilica, a martyrium, the Frontinus Gate, a gymnasium, an Apollo temple, and the so-called Pluto’s Gate (Plutonium), a shrine sacred to the ancient god of the underworld, Pluto.

In bid to help protect the historical and cultural heritage of Malatya in the aftermath of the 2023 earthquake, Tofaş launched an initiative to resume the unfinished archaeological excavations at Arslantepe Höyüğü, a designated UNESCO World Heritage Site.

INCLUSION AND DIVERSITY

GENDER EQUALITY

Tofaş seeks to promote gender equality through activities that create social added value.

In line with the Gender Equality Forum’s global acceleration plan to achieve gender equality through the Technology and Innovation for Gender Equality Action Coalition, Tofaş will contribute towards efforts to increase the number of girls studying science, technology, engineering, and mathematics subjects throughout Türkiye by creating new projects a whose aim is to achieve this as well as by participating in existing ones. Tofaş has set itself the goal of reaching 30 thousand girls through such projects by 2026.

To this end, last year the company distributed “Gender Bias-Free Career Choice” training materials among its employees. Developed in collaboration with TAPV in 2022, the materials were designed for middle school and high school students as well as for their parents. Tofaş also hosted an online “Hack-Auto Women” camp to which it invited female senior-year engineering students, graduate students, doctoral candidates, and recent graduates to connect with Tofaş and discover their own potential. The camp was attended by about 2,000 young women. Participants demonstrating the most success are being considered for traineeship and job positions at Tofaş.