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Representing Marmara Around the World
Marmara Sea Day & World Oceans Day
June 8, 2025
Previous Events
National Geographic Retreat
In September 2024, Dahlia attented the Young Explorer Retreat in D.C. Washington, hosted at the National Geographic HQ, where she presented a 3-minute speech to Jill Tiefenthaler and the NatGeo team. Networking with like-minded individuals, this event marked the start of our Marmara Citizen Science program.
B for Good Leaders
In May 2024, Sadaqah attended the B for Good Leaders Summit in Amsterdam. This event brought together over 1000 entrepreneurs, executives, and sustainability-minded leaders from over 50 countries to discuss and promote a regenerative economic system. Sadaqah attended as a representative of SOA Marmara.
Marmara Urban Forum (MARUF)
In October 2023, our team got to represent SOA Marmara at the Marmara Urban Forum (MARUF) in Istanbul. With over 60 topics to explore and over 5000 participants to meet, we got to engage in a ton of discussions and activities that encouraged building more resilient cities and protecting the Marmara's marine biodiversity through policy, advocacy, storytelling and community-based actions.
Bursa City Council
In October 2023, our team represented SOA Marmara at the Bursa City Council meeting where Sadaqah and I got to discuss our initiatives with political representatives, as well as with representatives of several universities and NGOs in Turkiye.
Marmara Için Boyama
In collaboration with Ocean Uprise, we brought our community together to paint a vision for the Marmara Sea. Using art to inspire action is one of the ways we love to engage with our community. Ensuring our activities are fun is a crucial part of the equation when it comes to education and conservation.
Marmara Sea at COP27
Turkey joined COP27 in Egypt where Ela became the voice of the youth of Turkey and Egypt, representing the Marmara Sea with TUBITAK alongside her team at SOA At COP27, Turkey’s Minister of Environment updated their carbon emission reduction plan, increasing the target from 21% to 41%.