About Us

1. OUR STORY

We believe that there are several individuals wishing to make the world a better place by caring more about the others; we are one of them. On one side, we have individuals not knowing where to find the right opportunity to volunteer or not always trusting donation channels. On the other side, we have Turkish Civil Organisations, getting their funding mainly from corporate sources and trying hard to diversify this source of financing and struggling to find talented and engaged volunteer committed for the long term to support their causes.

So we launched, in Turkey, a new experience to establish a bridge between these Pro Bono volunteering skills and these needs. 

We launched our platform in February 2014 and we started our corporate events in December 2014.

C@rma has been corporate company incorporated in Turkey since November 2014.

2. Our Team

Sandrine Ramboux   

Founder and Managing Director

Sandrine Ramboux has been living in Turkey since 2007. For 6 years, she worked at ING Turkey heading the department Strutured and Corporate Finance and then Operational Excellence. She always struggled personally to find suitable ways to engage her and her teams with the community or to give back during catastrophe like the Van earthquake. So, after making some surveys with friends about her project, she took the leap of faith and left a 20y banking carreer to find a way to establish a link between the Turkish professionals caring to give back to community and Civil Organizations.

Since then, she has been advocating the use of skill- based volunteering in Turkey to support the capacity building of Turkish NGOs. She has been a speaker at TEDX Bruges (2014), Turkish Win (2014), UNDP Social Good Summit (2014), Istanbul Social Innovation Summit (2015). She is part of the Responsible Leader Network supported by the BMW Foundation and a member of the Global Board Ready Women. She is also a board member in the Istanbul-based Dutch school.

Sandrine has a Master’s degree in Business Engineering from ICHEC (Brussels, B) and is Chartered Financial Analyst. She also got a Master of Laws in European and International Law (Leyden, Nl).

Margarita Mecheva

Margarita is Russian and she was born, studied and worked during 14 years in Moscow. Her passion in sociology and cinematography influenced her choice of career in marketing – consumer behavior, brand advertising, training and talent development, PR and CSR programs were key areas of interest to her. She has held various positions from brand manager to marketing director in big international companies such as Nestle, Mars, Pepsi and ING.

In 2010 she moved from Moscow to Istanbul, Turkey and decided to be more involved in social projects. She served two years in PTA of international school helping to build the community of international families – by establishing ways of communication, organizing community events, leading volunteering projects and fundraising campaigns. She is also an active member of International Professional Women of Istanbul and is involved in various projects aiming at increasing foreign women participation in Turkish society. At the same time she enhanced her knowledge of corporate meetings and events by leading business development projects of Turkish and Russian event agencies.

"The day when I met Sandrine with her newly launched C@RMA – a platform for bro-bono volunteering was a life-changing event. There were so many of us – foreigners or Turkish women who wanted to “give back” to the society and use their competences to help nonprofits to become more professional and powerful, but we simply did not know how! So, It was a "perfect match" – and I am very glad that I can contribute to the development of Pro Bono in Turkey (and may be later in some other countries too)." 

Isil Arisoy Kaya

Işıl Arısoy Kaya is Turkish and graduated from Istanbul University Business Administration Faculty in 1999. She holds an MSc in International Management from University Of Exeter United Kingdom.
She worked in marketing as brand/product manager in local and international companies like IBM, Vodafone, BlackBerry and Evyap.
In 2012 she made a career change and started to work as a freelance contemporary artist. Cooperating with several galleries and also with interior designers to support their designs with related artwork.
While developing her new career, she came across social entrepreneurship and saw the impact of this emerging concept on society. Therefore she wanted to be part of C@rma's journey to build that ecosystem.

Amélie Gaucherand

Amélie is French and graduated from HEC School of Management in Business Administration in 2000.
Through her different job experiences in multinational groups like L'Oreal (2000-2004, Brand manager for Vichy dermocosmetics) or Danone (1999 in Singapore and 2005 in Ireland, Senior Brand Manager for Cow & Gate Infants Nutrition) she has developed competencies in marketing, from market survey and product development to CRM, media planning and launch plans.

After several assignments in associations (Fundacion Chile 2006-2007, Santiago Accueil 2007-2008) she has been working as an entrepreneur developing her own business of French designed children clothes in Mexico (2008-2012). Arrived in Turkey 1,5 years ago, she now wants to use her experience to help developing C@rma and therefore give sense and impact to her actions. She believes in the multiplier effect of a professional intermediate helping to match corporate CSR, Pro bono volunteers and social organisations and of the potential of such enterprises and networks worldwide.

Julie Ramboux

Co-Founder and Chief Technology Manager Julie Ramboux, traveling betweeen Belgium and Turkey, manages the IT development of C@rma. She is the interface with the web developer and is in charge of quality checks in all the required specifications.

Before joining C@rma, she worked for 3 years as a project leader in several web agencies in Belgium taking real care in scoping carefully client's needs as well as well as keeping deadline in control.

Julie has a master degree in Communication and Advertising, from a Brussels communication high school (IHECS)

Wonderful Friends

The C@rma journey has only been made possible thanks to the support of fantastic friends who introduced us to the social sector and its main players. Throughout the research and interview period, we have been amazed by the wonderful people we met along the road, devoted to their causes. We could really feel energized by it... so thank you to all of them!!!!!

3. Our Advisory Board

Our Advisory board is our sounding board, the one daring telling us we might not be on the right track, challenging our way of thinking and making us think more clearly, more broadly. They are also connecting us with the right persons eanbling us to move always further. We built it trying to be diverse in terms of gender, experience and nationality. Come back soon to check who we are proud to work with !

4. Our activity report

We don't produce an activity report but you can find all our metrics on the left side of the Home page or by clicking on the Volunteering page.