Edirne Nature Sports Club Association-EDOSK

Our club, Edirne Doğa Sporları Kulübü (EDOSK), was founded in the centre of Edirne in 2005. Currently it has over 130 active members and volunteer workers. The club is administrated by the board of directors. Our club is a leading organization in the region especially in the activity fields of mountaineering, trekking, hiking, camping, orienteering, canoeing, skiing, youth, nature activities, and its works towards developing eco-tourism in the Thrace Region, northwest of Turkey where the city is situated. Our club has been quite successful in its attempts to promote wider use of bikes in the region as a sportive, ecology-friendly, healthy means of transportation. EDOSK has been locally active for now with more than one hundred bikers registered in City Youth and Sports Directorate. From the foundation of our club up to now, it has done various works to promote biking both as a sport and means of transportation. Thanks to these efforts, today active bikers of the city outnumber one thousand. We have organized biking activities at weekends during the year and special occasions like national days and managed to achieve high public attendance. These activities in Edirne and its villages have been a sportive bridge across the Thrace. Also in collaboration with Turkish Ministry of Education, we have implemented a EU Youth Education Culture project titled “Two Wheels Much Sugar” in disadvantaged local schools during which hundreds of students and their parents were trained how to ride bikes in safety. Our club, in cooperation with Edirne Governorship, Edirne Municipality and EU Info Centre, had a big role in the contribution of an international Cycling Festival with attendance of hundreds of cyclers from neighbouring countries which was held for the 4th time this year. We have been organizing 3 international Cycling tours (Danube, Balkan and “3 Countries One Vehicle” tours) which have strengthened our international dialogue. We have taken part in the preparation works of European Commission Iron Curtain Biking Trail, European Biking Trail workshop in Sophia (BG), an exhibition in Amsterdam (NL), a festival in Orestiada (GR) voluntary and at our own expenses in an attempt to add our city Edirne to biking tourism routes and we have been successful in this just recently, in May 2014. As a consequence of our strong promoting activities on the net, our works have had positive effect on Thrace and many other regions of Turkey and been appreciated nationwide. Our youth volunteers took part in a project in Sofia name “Look around and be the nature” which held 40 young people from Romania, Spain, Bulgaria, Turkey, Slovakia participants had the possibility to feel the nature and hike to the Mount Rila which is the highest pick of Bulgaria. Between 15th and 22nd of August, a group of EDOSK youth attended to the project in Madrid named “Young Europeans United In Equality and Friendship by the help of partnership with ADEFIS. The project in Madrid was about social problems all around Europe. Right after Madrid, another youth group from EDOSK attended to a project in Murcia named “Roots of Life”. It is a project about nature and saving nature which is is held from 25th of August to 1st of September. At last but not least, our biggest contribution is ATUSS project which is formed in partnership of Turkey and Bulgaria by IPA Cross-Border Projects. We have trained many volunteers in countless courses for nature sports and designed bicycle routes for trial of trainings. We are recently interested in ecology and eco-tourism. Despite our priorities, we are a laborious association and we are open to any kind of partnership for social, natural, civil, sportive, artistic, cultural, individual and holistic improvement projects and training courses. At the moment we have finished additional projects in 2015 and three more project are to be performed, all of which are Cross Border Cooperation with Bulgarian partners.