Who is Hayri Dağlı?
Hayri Dağlı has been fascinated about the unknowns of the Earth since his early childhood. His initial interest led him towards later in life pursuing Geography, learning more about the world in depth while attending Dokuz Eylül University. He then furthered his studies by specializing in Sustainable Development at Stockholm University. After finishing his degree, Hayri Dağlı connected himself among Turkey’s largest non-governmental organizations, working for many years in the Education and Nature Protection fields.
Pursuing his global curiosity, Hayri Dağlı had already experienced 67 countries across the globe whenever his attention was redirected during his travels in Africa. In 2014, while ascending Mount Kilimanjaro and interacting with the local life of the natives of the region, Hayri Dağlı was faced with the actuality of the poor living conditions that most of us only have the means to imagine. During this time period of his life, Hayri Dağlı saw first hand the state of villages and the difficulties that were fought everyday by the villagers affected by their immediate environment. Plaguing them were issues varying from ongoing civil wars to inaccessible reach of water and food.
After this brute realization, Hayri Dağlı wanted to act. Coming across the village of Mta Kwa Mtu in Tanzania, was where the beginning of his volunteer work began. Stemming from one of his observations was that girls were deprived of their opportunity to attend school due to their responsibility to retrieve water daily. A trek that the average girl had to endure 6 kilometers every day. One girl in particular was hard to forget from this experience. Fatima, a 7-year-old girl who dreams of becoming a nurse, knew it was only a dream because of her unbreakable ties with retrieving water.
Compelled to make a change in not only Fatima’s life, but more widenly the lives of all affected by extreme poverty, Hayri Dağlı wanted to ensure that access to human basic needs could be reached. For no matter where you are in the world, or who you are, all lives deserve the chance at the fundamental needs of a human’s existence.
Starting with Fatima’s village, the first sustainable water and agriculture project was created through the workings of Hayri Dağlı. From this moment, as well, was the creation of hope. In regenerating a village, giving access to cleaner water, and establishing an agriculture system, all attempts that could be made, were, in the goal to alleviate the struggles of those in considerable circumstances.
Near the end of his stay in Africa, Hayri Dağlı made an extensive decision. He returned to his home city of Istanbul, resigned from his job, closed all of his bank accounts, and distributed all of his belongings to those in need.
The second that he had gotten home, he had turned right around and bought a one-way ticket to Africa. Thus, his full transition from leaving behind the comfort of his city life to living in extreme poverty would be the beginning of his story. This choice would unravel to be the life changing journey of touching the lives of tens of thousands of people.
Once Hayri Dağlı returned back to Africa, he then settled in a village in order to understand the millions of people who struggle to live for less than a dollar a day. In the extreme poor and forgotten geographies, for 6 months he dedicatedly lived for under a dollar a day to truly survive like the indegiouous. Experiencing first hand the side effects of poverty, thirst and hunger, it became abundantly clear that the one-time aids to the region did not provide near enough effort towards creating a permanent solution.
At this point, Hayri Dağlı took action for a permanent and sustainable solution of the problems on a global scale and established IDEA Universal with the principles of transparency and independence. The IDEA Universal team developed the “Smart Villages” model, which offers an integrated and holistic solution to water, agriculture, energy, and education problems in a short time frame. As an innovative and sustainable development model, “Smart Villages” has been included in the top “5 Most Innovative Projects in Africa”, selected by the United Nations. Thanks to these Smart Villages and other innovative projects, IDEA Universal has so far permanently transformed and continues to transform the lives of 200,000 people throughout 6 countries in Africa and Asia.
