The third sector in the fighting against poverty: A sociological study on the voluntary foundations

Poverty is amongst the most important issues of today's world. A historical phenomenon, poverty, is experienced by the masses at extreme levels, and affects them deeply. It is defined by absolute, relative, and humanitarian criteria, arises due to different reasons in rural and urban areas and is experienced by different social groups in various ways. The most important difference of today's poverty to the poverty of previous periods is that, not only the sensitive groups, but also the working population has been affected by it and it leads to unpredictable results.The consequences and the dimensions of the poverty has been reflected to the efforts of "fight against poverty" and made it compulsory to implement these efforts on a global scale. However, since the effects of poverty is felt locally, the fight against poverty has to be executed locally. Today, there are many official and civil institutions to fight against poverty. The strategies and the part of the population addressed by these institutions differ from each other, and their aims and objectives may vary as well. In this study, the voluntary foundations fighting against the poverty at the local level are examined.Although the voluntary organizations have important roles to eliminate the negative impacts of the poverty, their lack of power and resources makes them insufficient to eliminate or reduce the impacts of poverty as a whole. The voluntary foundations, which has to deal with financial and bureaucratic obstacles, represent organising foundations the understanding of social responsibility and philanthropy in community, under an institutional roof.Key Words: Poverty, fighting against poverty, volunteering, voluntary foundations.