IFUW was founded in 1919 after the first World War by women who believed in the importance of working together for peace, international understanding and friendship. IFUW is an international, non-profit organisation of women graduates working to promote lifelong education, to improve the status of women and girls and to enable women to effect positive change for a peaceful world. 79 national affiliates and members in more than 120 countries take an interdisciplinary approach to global issues though international advocacy, networking, research, conferences, seminars, workshops and local community projects.

TAUW's mission includes

• Protection and improvement of women's rights,
• Improvement of economic and social status of women,
• Improvement of educational levels of women and girls throughout Turkey,
• Improving participation of women in decision making and politics,
• Promoting friendship, exchange of ideas and understanding among university women of the world,
• Representing university women in national and international organisations

Activities,

National and local;

• Organises seminars and conferences to promote its objectives,
• Provides financial support to university women students,
• Organises trips in and out of the country to exchange ideas among its members and members of other affiliates,
• Cooperates with other women societies dedicated to similar goals,
• Runs projects to increase education level and social awareness of women and girls,
• Lobbies the government an issues related to its objectives especially corcerning legal rights and equality.

TUAW Gaziantep Branch

TUAW Gaziantep branch is established in 1989. Since our target groups were women and young people, we have arranged many conferences related to them and we provided financial support for a lot of university students since it had been established. We still continue to support 61 university students financially.

In 1997, we, as TUAW Gaziantep branch, applied to a grant project which is arranged IFUW BINA ROY Partners in Development (BRPID). BRPID encourages international soliditary and partnership between IFUW federations and associations. Its primary goal is to support projects empowering women and girls though education and lidership.

The aim of this project was to decrease non-literate adult population and courses are offered as well as skills training in sewing and home-textiles in Southeastern Anatolia Region, Gaziantep by the leadership of Professor Dr. Zerrin Söylemez. The BRPID contribution sougth in this project was 17.211 Switzerland Frank. Many courses had been taking place between 1997-2001. At the end of this project, 102 women deserved literacy-certificate and 147 women deserved manuel skill literacy certificate. And also, social, legal and health topics are dealt with by professional members of our association.