European Integration Group

European Integration Group (EIG) was established in 2015 in Istanbul, Turkey by few young and dynamic people, who have experience in the sphere of social projects realization on the local and international levels. The group believes that they key to welfare, stability, democracy and tolerance is the successful integration of all the social and ethnic groups into society. Even though the group is itself young, it has simply united experienced professionals working in the sphere of integration in order to help the minorities in Istanbul. Therefore, the experience within the organisation is high. Besides helping refugee in Istanbul our group promotes active youth participation in elections. In many countries, particularly in Eastern Europe and newly-established democracies, people have expressed deep concern not only about the overall low level of participation, but especially among specific groups like youth, women and the indigenous population. Increasing reluctance among youth to participate in politics and exercise the right to vote is particularly alarming and amounts, according to some, to a weakening of democracy. Therefore, it is imperative to find out the reasons for low youth turnout in order to reverse this trend and re-engage the young in the political and democratic process. Generally, the main aims of our non formal group are:  education, science and culture project development;  charity;  solving of various social problems persisting within the local community;  development of youth projects, interests and social activities;  raising social welfare and improving living conditions of the poor and socially disadvantaged groups of people;  minimizing youth unemployment;  promote “every single vote matter” campaign;  educating the youth about entrepreneurship and various opportunities within the EU;  help minorities (in particular, refugees) in Istanbul to: (1) get used to using all the public facilities in the city; (2) understand how the healthcare and other emergency services work; (3) learn the language so that communication barrier would be gone. This is done by also promoting Erasmus+ projects and opportunities behind it, because it is one of the best ways to fight the previously mentioned problems. According to the named aims, here are the issues, which are very interesting for us: - Volunteer movement (individual and group support and aid to people that need assistance, especially young people, children deprived of parental care and guardianship; the mentoring program for such youngsters). - Youth development (promotion among young people the ideas of active citizenship and lifestyle, self-employment and entrepreneurship, critical view on the everyday life).