Atlas Youth Club

Atlas Youth Club (AYC) is an informal group founded by a group of young people who are active in youth work in Antalya, Turkey. We aim to help young people who have lack of opportunities to improve themselves and bring positive change to the world. We also would like to provide opportunities for them to meet young people from different parts of Europe and work on Youth Projects for a certain period of time. Our group members, most of whom are employees or volunteers at Döşemealtı Municipality, are experienced in organizing local activities for the youth. Our group consists of 10 people who are mostly university students, teachers and a counsellor. AYC takes active roles in: -guiding the youth to contribute to the creation of local politics in our Municipality with the cooperation of DÖGEM (Döşemealtı Youth Council); -supporting the active citizenship by developing the knowledge, attitude, skills and actions of youngsters in our local area; -engaging the youth in various activities such as gardening, safe biking, cooking, beach cleaning, 3 R’s (Reduce-Recycle-Reuse) to spend their time effectively; -organizing trainings/seminars at the Municipality Hall to raise the awareness of local young people about different issues such as environment, health, digital literacy, entrepreneurship, sustainability, etc. Our local area, Döşemealtı is about 25 km away from Antalya city center. The inhabitants are mostly farmers which makes the social and economic profile of local people quite low. Therefore, we prefer working with disadvantaged young people in our projects, events, case studies and trainings. We are lucky because our Municipality provided the local young people with a new Youth Center last year. This center welcomes the local children, teens and the youth and gives those opportunities to fill their free time with sports, music, drama and other social and cultural activities. It has a conference hall, swimming pool, music room, library where Atlas Youth Club members do volunteer work.