Gençlik ve Değişim Derneği / Youth and Change Association - Diyarbakir

Hikayemiz

Gençlik ve Degisim Dernegi (Youth and Change Association) which held its first General Assembly on September 30, 2009, has been founded with the support and partnership of Diyarbakir Local Agenda 21 City Council Youth Assembly. Although newly established, the association in partnership with the Youth Assembly realized various campaign activities, surveys aiming at determine the problems of the youth in Diyarbakir, capacity building trainings and various meetings in order to gather the NGO’s working in the youth field. Beside the valuable works realized with completely local means and with willingness of the youngsters, the association tries to expand its field by submitting projects to different financial institutions.
Our many projects are supported by Youth in Action Programme: “To Be A Volunteer in The City of Dreams”, “Discovering The Secrets of Stones”, “Different Cultures Common Values”, “European Union With The Games” and “ART for Self-Discovery”.

Thanks to international partnership, in a short time, our association sent dozens of young people to Poland, Romania, Czech Republic, Austria, Lithuania, France and Spain. Finally, within the context of our project “We Are Beginning To Change The World From Our Own Locals!” supported by the Youth in Action Program Action 5.1. We get the opportunity to host in 36 young from 7 countries of Europe and 2 valuable parliamentarians from Hungary and Romania.

Within the context of the project “Local Democracy Academies for Active Participation into the Social Life” supported by the Sabanci Foundation, the “Local Democracy Academy” which is founded in Diyarbakir is implemented in coordination of Diyarbakir Metropolitan Municipality and Diyarbakir Local Agenda 21 City Council with our association. It is aimed to improve the right-based capacity building, awareness raising, policy-advocate activities, urban implementations and policies towards women, children and youth in the context of the project. The academy is supported by the institutions which are WALD (World Academy of Local Democracies), NDI (National Democratic Institute), UNICEF-UN Children’s Found, KEDV (Foundation of Woman Labour Evaluation) and AYDER (Alternative Life Association). Thanks to our academy we have trained 600 young, woman, disable and children. However, with the partner of our project, UNICEF we have done ‘city analysis’ with 1.100 people.

Our main activities:
Bring together representatives of high school student unions, university student councils; local, regional and national youth organizations as well as employed, unemployed and unorganized Youth,
Support transferability in capacity building of young people with peer education,
Create a sense of belonging to the city,
Develop solutions for the problems of youth at the local level,
Provide interaction with different social youth groups,
Enable young people from diverse backgrounds to produce together, and
provide urban facilities from which youth cannot profit.
Integrate Turkish people to EU and to create awareness of EU.