Sahra Pazari

Problem: On 6th Feb 2023, people of Southeastern Turkey and Northern Syria woke up to a doomsday scenario. An area of about 350,000 km2 (140,000 sq mi) has been dramatically damaged due to two major earthquakes with the magnitudes of 7,8 and 7,6. Impacting a total of 26 million (15.73 million in Turkey and 11 million in Syria), the earthquake sequenced into a death toll of 59,259 (50.738 in Turkey alone) and left 107,703 people injured and amputees across 11 major cities located in Southeastern Turkey. Besides an average of 4 million affected buildings, an estimate of 1.5 million people became homeless only in Turkey. 

Ranking the fifth-deadliest of the 21st century, the economic implications of the earthquake are huge. By the instance of the earthquake, Turkish stock markets fell and Turkish lira saw a record low against the US dollar. The total cost of the earthquake is estimated as $84.1 billion US dollars by TÜRKONFED. Moreover, it is estimated by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) that the earthquake has the potential to result in a 1% drop in Turkey’s GDP in 2023. 

11 cities-wide region is responsible for nearly 20 percent of Turkey's food and agricultural production. Besides these estimated losses, the quake-affected region unfortunately suffered from spoiled supply chains and broad amounts of emigration. Hence, the escape of the already-elite portions of the local community, left the region in a dire need of financial circulation. Stocks and harvests under the rubble, the small and medium enterprises, farmers and manufacturers are extremely affected and rendered unable to do their businesses. Having lives, families and people teared apart and business settings completely collapsed, survivors of the earthquake barely lean on to reclaim their lives. Thus, the earthquake-affected region lacks a decent level of buying and income power that catalyze the financial circulation. In order to rebuild life again in the earthquake region, local people are waiting, in hindsight, to be included in the supply chains and markets in which they could sell their harvest and productions.

In this skyrocketed silo of problems, we aim to bring about a solution to the overly-collapsed financial profile of the earthquake survivors in order to include them again in the supply chains. The money circulation in the earthquake region will be hopefully restored, and it will add up to render the region a self-sustained area. This problem is seen as an important part of the humanitarian damages caused by the earthquake. However, first and foremost, survivors of the earthquake are in dire need of principal survival needs such as sheltering, food, clothing and clean water. That’s why, providing our service without making sure of basic human needs of earthquake survivors will be seen as a negative approach. Therefore, there is a need to develop empathy while interacting with survivor MSMEs in the earthquake affected areas. We prioritize integrating the needs and ideas of the earthquake survivors in the course of design processes of our solution. 

Solution: The above-worded series of problems in Southeastern Turkiye make the financial inclusion of earthquake-affected people a priority. Access to supply chains and markets become a crucial issue for the left-behind survivors of the earthquake in the region. Thus, with an aim to empower access to supply chains and remove the barriers before the earthquake survivors, we created an end-to-end digital marketplace based on cooperative terms. Our digital marketplace, Sahra Pazari, allows earthquake survivors to sell their products, stocks and harvest directly to the consumers, guaranteeing a rate of zero commission, in a continuous cycle.Our newborn online marketplace acts as an intermediary between buyers and sellers while providing direct selling and B2C services. 

Unlike an average online retailing platform, Sahra Pazari, runs under the terms of cooperation system. As known, in traditional manufacturing and agricultural cooperatives, certain aspects of the business such as the stocks and the return of sales are directed to a pool which all the cooperative members benefit jointly. 

Building on responsive-web-design (RWD), Sahra Pazari promises a user-friendly experience in a variety of devices. This way, it provides accessibility to the system for each and every buyer user. The online marketplace is created to adapt omnichannel business strategies.

The online marketplace, in brief terms, integrates mobile and e-commerce business models and specifically opens a secure, inclusive and fair digital space to the earthquake survivors to sell their products.

Target Group: Our solution specifically serves earthquake survivors whose businesses are severely impacted by the 6th Feb earthquakes and left behind their customers and potential supply chains. It enhances the lives of earthquake survivors by allowing them to be included in a broad network of customers. Being a part of our digital marketplace, earthquake survivors will reclaim their economic powers and financial flows will be rejuvenated. This way, a sustainable circulation of finances will be empowered for the earthquake-affected region. All will add up to the normalization of the daily lives of local people in the midst of lacking social and economic recovery and relief support by the local and central governments.

Our interactions with the earthquake survivors led us to develop our idea and prototype. We worked with communities that are located both in villages, country-sides and city-centers. By the help of our grounded network with both local communities and other civil society organizations which we are in collaboration with, we have the chance to observe financial needs of the local communities. As our network grew by time, we built close ties with local communities and will look more in the period of improving our connection in the affected areas. These contacts are within our reach by the help of our active communication and distribution channels with the earthquake-affected region. Building on our self-evolved  and humble humanitarian relief efforts, our core members are determined to establish and flourish this operation with good manners at heart.Our motivation is strengthened mostly by the lack of financial integration of local producers and farmers. Although large scale enterprises buy products of survivor MSMEs, one-time wholesales do not provide a scalable, comprehensive and sustainable solution for the problem. 

We believe our active and emerging communication with the local networks and communities will lead to a meaningful development of our newborn digital marketplace. We make sure to develop our products and services in relation to the ever-changing needs of the earthquake survivors. Furthermore, we especially value the authentic communication between end-users of our system so that we believe we can healthily integrate needs into the system while developing a disciplined requirement analysis for our B2C services.

We are on the verge of activating our website. We are working on fine details of the website, and our database for the earthquake survivor MSMEs is nearly ready to kick-off. Therefore, we are way more beyond the concept phase.

None yet.

Not only reduced to the monetary incentives that the program promises, we aim to be a part of Solve due to its diverse and vibrant culture which brings solver teams and partners of all kinds together. We foresee that we will be having some legal, technical and market barriers in the course of our business development. While we scale up our work, we would like to be supported by the experts with an aim to provide the best fit solution to the earthquake survivors. 

We want to be a part of Solve’s top-class mentoring opportunities while having the chance to interact with other Solver teams around the world. We would like to deeply engage in social impact work and we highly acknowledge the unique value of interdisciplinary perspectives and sharing stories. Being exposed to the highly energetic environment of the Solve will also spark our motivation and morale, as we dealt with many severe issues within the course of our interactions with earthquake survivors. We believe that this start will surely bring support for fulfilling the very needs in the first steps of this crawling project.

It utilizes a virtual door to the real market with broader effect, by giving all sellers registered in the system a chance to benefit from return of sales on each product sold. Based on cooperative dynamics, the return of the sales on each product sold is pooled into a repository and the sellers (earthquake survivor MSMEs) make profits by the rate of their embodied shares of products in the digital marketplace. This way, each and every sale benefits the entire seller community, which is included in the system.

Current digital market space only allows earthquake survivors to benefit from their individual sales. Also, this is not clear until when the large digital B2C platforms will support earthquake survivor MSMEs to do business on their platforms, without a zero commission. One of the most significant awareness which our solution will bring about is to revive an ancient culture of “imece” -a collective stewardship and collaboration that emerges in local communities. Raising awareness on rebuilding life and regaining financial stability within the earthquake affected communities will unleash a spirit of collective recovery and relief. Also, in line with this aim, we are creating and integrating a sibling family system which allows volunteer families to be a steward for the needs of earthquake affected families, for a certain amount of time. This also contributes to the bonding with earthquake affected families, while making survivors feel included. 

It also gives families the sibling family system, by which families can create bonds with the affected areas and could give direct help to the families in those areas.

Based on a step-by-step approach , we assume that the first year will be a recovery stage for earthquake survivors’ both social, cultural and financial sustainability. As we move forward with little improvements on financial stability, we also aim to introduce an ecologically-aware approach on manufacturing processes, where needed. We are confident that we will have a fully-operating, seamless network of MSMEs in our system that comprise earthquake survivors within a year. 

By the time financial sustainability is restored, which may be fulfilled towards the end of next 5 years, the sellers can choose to stay on this project, because they will be able to reach a market with unlimited possibilities and gather additional earnings. On that scope, the MSMEs can promote their local products to not only to different parts of Turkey but also to the world with relatively little effort.

In line with our ecological sensitivity, we believe we will be providing zero-emission product line consultancy to the survivor MSMEs within our system. We know that it is relatively easier to introduce revolutionary approaches, such as green business practices, when something is rebuilding from scratch. Harnessing from the very rebuilding of life in the earthquake affected region, we believe a comprehensive change is possible on activating climate-neutral MSMEs practices. We aim to contribute to both zero-emission and greening the pipeline goals that are envisaged in the UN SGDs and by many more multilateral organizations.

In order to measure our progress, we will be following regional economic reports which are released by trusted observatory organizations and institutions. We will also be tracking the volume of transactions through our digital marketplace and will be reflecting and reporting on the outcomes in regular intervals. Tracking the transactions and MSMEs that are included in our system will help us to confer our progress compared to the first days of the project. We will also harness data visualization techniques to track our growth (e.g. registered end-users, sales made in particular of times, beneficiary surveys) and publish visualized graphics to the public in the forms of press releases, on the basis of bi-weekly, monthly or quarterly intervals. Recording the volume of sales and the return of sales will be our primary methodology to measuring our progress. 

Furthermore, we will be conducting both online, face-to-face or audio surveys and interviews with the beneficiaries of our system. In this regard we will not only measure our progress in terms of quantitative terms but also qualitative terms. We will be regularly gathering feedback from the beneficiaries within the system in order to reflect on their experiences and the levels of user satisfaction.

Desired state: If successful, our solution will result in a significant financial relief for the survivors whose businesses are damaged and outed from the supply-chains. In the short-term, we will be observing that damaged MSMEs within the earthquake affected region will be regaining their financial stability day by day with small chunks and on cooperative principles. This will contribute to the morale of earthquake survivors and empower them. While sprouting seeds of hope in survivors, the motivation of the survivors will be revived and their attitudes and beliefs will be supported towards reclaiming their lives again. For the intermediate-terms, as the motivation progresses, the MSMEs will gain new skills, experiences and knowledge by being a part and user of such a digital marketplace. Selling their products by overcoming physical and market barriers will create a culture of doing business, and the MSMEs will also learn from each other. The system will also allow for open and safe space for seller survivors to share their perspectives and experiences, and this will build a culture of healing together and collaboration. On the long-term grounds, seller survivors will be confident and able to sell their own products not only to the national markets but also to the neighboring countries and international markets. One of the most significant long-term benefits of our solution will be planting ecological-sensitivity into the business practices while rebuilding financial sustainability for the survivor MSMEs. Growing a network of MSMEs on a cooperative basis will also unleash a culture of earn-together. Becoming a strong cooperative that consists of earthquake survivor sellers will heal the economic and social conditions in the earthquake affected region. All these developments will result in preserving the unique cultural, historical and ecological texture of the Southeastern Turkey. In this regard, the very rich, diverse and ancient cultural landscape and heritage will be preserved and the very self-determination of people of the earthquake affected region will be empowered. 

Behavior altering: In order to achieve above-worded outcomes, the priority change should be on the behaviors and attitudes of earthquake survivors. The survivors MSMEs should be willing to be a part of such a digital marketplace. We predict that there might be biased approaches towards the use of digital and mobile technologies within the region. Although we are in the age of information societies and artificial intelligence, not every society has the opportunities and tools to develop digital citizenship skills to be integrated in the information society. Furthermore, the Southeastern Turkey still lacks a significant amount of literacy on digital technologies. That’s why producers, manufacturers and farmers might fall in the trap of proceeding with traditional ways of doing business, manufacturing and agriculture. Also, new, green and technologically-assisted approaches in small and medium businesses are rare due to barriers of access to knowledge. Therefore, as our target group, we predict we might be dealing with breaking taboos about digital technologies. 

Overall, our proposed theory of change aims to heal the wounds of earthquake survivors in a most-possible fast fashion.

The core technology that our solution leans on web-based digital retailing practices which are bundled with underlying technologies such as online transaction processing, electronic data interchange(EDI) and inventory management systems. Our solution relies on online B2C  and C2C practices via both website and mobile application (very soon). The progressive phases of our solution also benefit from complementary technologies such as online forms and SMS in order to gather data from the earthquake survivors who are part of our digital marketplace. We also aim to operate our stocks and data storage and processes on blockchain-based systems in order to provide reliability, trustworthiness and transparency to our solution.

There is a mixed group of people from different countries and cultures as volunteers by our side. So, they can be a part of the solution for reaching out to earthquake survivors. In all the survivors, disadvantaged and marginalized ones are our primary concern. (Please, kindly notice the diversity and inclusion in our proposed theory of change.) We have determined to include all the manufacturers without any discrimination based on religion, ethnicity, gender and sexual orientation, socio-economic demographics and bring the notion of awareness to the ones, who are not fond of.

Our business model can be described as a non-profit, not for profit B2C/ C2C organization, which would work for and with local small and medium businesses. While doing so, we will try to attract our customer’s attention to the wide range of natural and homemade products from the affected areas, so that they sustain and stabilize their total income. Our newborn online marketplace acts as an intermediary between buyers and sellers while providing direct selling and B2C services. The online marketplace, in brief terms, integrates mobile and e-commerce business models and specifically opens a secure, inclusive and fair digital space to the earthquake survivors to sell their products.

Our business model will be in the intersection of being a market intermediary and cooperative. While using a mixture of two discrete business models we will be providing services such as bulk purchasing, union agreements, cooperative incentives that are shared between the survivor MSMEs within the system. Besides, we will also provide intermediary services which enable earthquake survivors to access markets that are beyond their reach and physical restrictions. 

At the first stages, our focus will be on building strategic partnerships for bringing logistics support to reduce costs. In order to reduce the cost of logistics, at the start of the project, we would make sure all of them will be paid by customers. On the operating costs, we are also seeking for strategic partnerships and collaborations with related organizations and institutions. In the prospective software building phases for our mobile-app, we also seek support and consultancy from organizations who might be willing to collaborate with us under their CSR practices. Thus, we can meet our need of recruiting high-salary software engineers by harnessing strategic partnerships and stakeholderism from both academia, private sector and industry.  Besides, we strongly believe that there will be donations, investments and grants to support our solution on its way to fulfill its goals. We believe that we can steer our way to ignite the attention of different kinds of investors and accelerator programs.

There are a number of global and regional projects which operate on similar grounds to our project that we  designated for the earthquake affected areas. The integration of e-commerce and digital market intermediary practices for the SMEs is widely discussed for poverty alleviation, agrotech start-ups, agrofood marketing,  agricultural cooperatives, and to empower the supply chain of dairy cooperatives and even to enhance women entrepreneurs and cooperatives. It is also used  as a crisis relief method in the midst of Pandemic. These examples inspire us to invest more in our solution as we see the experimental and novel success stories, frameworks and models. 

We believe that we can learn from the experience of these examples. Also barriers that are faced in those examples will help us to steer our way to solve the problem and remove the barriers. 

On the contrary, there are no similar projects operating the same way in Turkey, as we are making this one effective soon.