Since 1979, November has been the month of International Marathon in Istanbul, with a route connecting the Asian and European continents, crossing a bridge over the Bosporus. This year was no exception and on 6 November 2022, runners from 105 countries and all around Turkey participated in the 44th edition of the Istanbul Marathon, held under the motto of "Istanbul is Yours, Don't Stop, Run".
The marathon primarily aims to attract runners who compete for charities and the Turkish Alzheimer Association is one of the NGOs participating in the marathon. On this, their 7th marathon, 126 runners participated and collected EUR 44,000, from 933 donors. One of the members of the Turkish Alzheimer Association team stood out from the crowd: Selim Kervancı (pictured) is the active CEO of HSBC Turkey in his professional life, while he has been running 15 km for charity every year in November and collecting donations for the civil society initiatives of NGOs. Fortunately, Mr Kervancı has been granting his steps and leading his donors to Turkish Alzheimer Association for the last two years and has been the champion of the Turkish Alzheimer Association team both in number and also in amount of donations he collected.
This year, Mr Kervancı has been ranked as the 30th runner among the 12,031 runners who participated in the 2022 Marathon. These runners collected a total of 35,8 million TL (EUR 1.85 million) from 101,562 donors, to help 24,485 living beings such as human beings, animals, trees, etc., while Mr Kervancı himself collected 471,370 TL (EUR 24,358) from 105 donors and empowered 14 patients with transportation service to/from day-care centres for 12 months.
The Turkish Alzheimer Association is very grateful for, and proud of, the commitment of Selim Kervancı, who has taken on different roles at HSBC Group since 1996 and has been the General Manager of HSBC Turkey since 1 July 2016. Consequently, he has been leading a very intensive career, and nevertheless devoting his time and energy to civil initiatives.
