Organization:

Toplum Gonulluleri Vakfi

Name of Project:

Youth and Social Rights

Grant Amount:

19,500 YTL

Website:

www.tog.org.tr

Brief Description of Organization:

Toplum Gonulluleri Vakfi (Community Volunteers Foundation) aims to realize social peace, solidarity and change through the participation and leadership of the youth. Read More.

Primary Purpose of the Project:

"Youth and Social Rights Project" aimed to create a platform among politicians, academicians, NGO representatives, bureaucrats and youth to discuss existing social rights issues of the Turkish youth and collaboratively produce possible solutions.

Needs that will be addressed:

In Turkey, problems of youth have especially been knitted around issues of education, employment, health, housing and participation. More than 20% of Turkish population belongs to the age group of 14-24. The problems faced by youth are usually visualized as non-liable and transitionary. To that end, the youth is not given a place in decision-making mechanisms. One of the premises of this project was the necessity to challenge these existing perceptions and get youth involved in decision-making.   

Population Targeted: University Students

Core Project Activities:

• Local Observation Groups and Reporting to identify and analyze the existing social services provided to youth. The groups then created policy recommendations.
• Peer Education Program, a threefold training program that is made up of trainer's training, dissemination trainings and face to face trainings.
• Dissemination Trainings held by a trainer team of 4 youngsters which were accompanied by an expert trainer from the Education Team, an evaluation expert, and Project coordinator
• Thematic Meetings aimed to bring together different political actors to discuss the role of youth in policy making.  

Area-focus:  Youth Education

Interim Report Date: May 15, 2009

Final Report Date: September 19, 2009

Outcomes:

• 20 participants in Istanbul, Izmir and Samsun respectively, came from 33 universities across Turkey
• 14 trainers participated in the three training sessions.
• "Life is Hard" Card Game was designed and used to produce a discussion base for social policy issues. 
• Through the workshops, participants discussed social problems of youth in Turkey such as the right to health services and housing, equal access to education, and freedom of association as well as the importance of civic participation to address these issues. Participants also attempted to create mechanisms  that include youth in decision-making of issues related to their own lives.
• According to the survey results of an independent appraiser before and after the trainings, all participants have shown significant improvements in learning levels in the areas mentioned above.

Tangible Outcomes:

• University Youth and Social Rights Report (Updated version of 2007 report) which focuses on individual themes by experts.
• University Youth and Social Rights Conference in November 2009 in Ankara. Read more.