TİM to Represent Turkey in Europe

The Turkish Exporters Assembly (TİM), with its "İnovaTİM High Schools: Artificial Intelligence, Innovation and Entrepreneurship" project, has been selected as a "National Champion" within the scope of the European Entrepreneurship Promotion Awards (EEPA), an initiative by the European Commission that recognizes best practices at national, regional and local levels in supporting entrepreneurship and SMEs, and has earned the right to represent Turkey at the European Commission. TİM also participated as a "National Champion" with its "TİM-TEB Entrepreneurship Houses" project in the 2019 EEPA Awards and was deemed worthy of a special award, successfully representing Turkey on the international stage. TİM Chairman İsmail Gülle stated: "We proudly waved our country's flag at the EEPA Awards, which brings together policymakers and opinion leaders from EU countries as well as important stakeholders in the entrepreneurship ecosystem. To ensure the continuation of successive international successes, our projects and new entrepreneurial initiatives will continue at full pace through the work of TİM's Innovation Committee." [caption id="attachment_102671" align="aligncenter"] İnovaTİM[/caption]

The project, which is Turkey's youngest and most innovative initiative and supports projects and teams that have achieved global success, will represent Turkey at the 2020 European Entrepreneurship Promotion Awards (EEPA), one of the most important international platforms in the fields of project, innovation and entrepreneurship.

The EEPA, which will take place in six categories, received applications this year in the "Investing in entrepreneurial talent: practices aimed at developing entrepreneurial skills and professional, technical and managerial skills" category. Following its national championship with the "TİM-TEB Entrepreneurship Houses" project conducted last year under the umbrella of the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Academy, TİM was awarded a special award among projects from 29 different countries and 290 national contact points participating in the "European Entrepreneurship Promotion Awards Ceremony" held during the "SME Assembly 2019" event in Helsinki, Finland, on 25-27 November. TİM Chairman İsmail Gülle, on the subject, said: "We proudly waved our country's flag at the EEPA Awards, which brings together policymakers and opinion leaders from EU countries as well as important stakeholders in the entrepreneurship ecosystem.

To ensure the continuation of successive international successes, our projects and new entrepreneurs will continue moving forward at full pace through the work of our Innovation Committee."

Through its "İnovaTİM High Schools: Artificial Intelligence, Innovation and Entrepreneurship" project, TİM is working toward instilling an awareness of innovation in high school students and developing innovative, high value-added projects grounded in the power of innovation, science and technology, with the goal of successfully representing Turkey in international competitions. Within this scope; since March 2019, 9,824 students from 207 high schools in 32 different provinces across Turkey have received 10-week training sessions from İnovaTİM trainers on the topics of Industry 4.0, IoT, innovation, knowledge economy, entrepreneurship, exports and artificial intelligence. Mentoring was provided regarding university life and education fields. Following the training, a robot was developed that performs tasks including forward-backward movement based on colors, distinguishing and identifying objects, and stopping and changing direction when encountering obstacles, to be used in the content of image processing in robotics training to be provided as of 2020. Following the training they received, students formed teams and developed projects, representing both their schools and Turkey in national and international competitions. While students from Erzurum Atatürk Vocational and Technical Anatolian High School finished second in a robotics competition held across Erzurum, the İnovaTİM high school project team Sneaky Snakes finished first in the Turkey Bosphorus Regional competition, becoming Turkey's champion, participated in the world championship and won awards for best autonomous task-performing robot and best mentor. The Sneaky Snakes team also won two of the "Blue Banner" flags representing the 3 most valuable of 26 awards at the regional competition.