London Club

London Club is an English – Turkish organization founded in 2014 in Bursa, Turkey. Established by Yusuf Ozcan and Linda Wright, that after working for several years in a commercial partnership, they decided to create and open London Club. As in Turkey most of English lectures are mainly grammatical, London Club found the opportunity to create a space where the main idea consists in helping people practicing their language skills with foreign teachers who came to our organization through AEISEC. The idea of bringing native teachers was not only to make our lessons more profitable for the students but also to introduce them a new concept of multiculturalism and diversity. Giving the students an opportunity to have a direct with a foreign teacher made them more interested and more excited in learning a new language as they discover more about different cultures at the same time. Rather than a language course, we operate as a speaking course and we are very proud to say that our students are very happy with us. The different concept of cafe-speaking club intends to make our students feel more comfortable and relax to learn and improve their communication skills. Our teachers promote the idea of integration and participation for all the students. In our 6th Year, we are now one of the most popular speaking clubs in Bursa, and so we decided to enrich our range working through Erasmus+ Programme. We plan to create international projects in order to develop awareness of a European diversity in the society and at the same time give an opportunity to youngster to participants in international mobility, especially the ones with fewer opportunities. London Club wanted to create an opportunity for youngsters to have the same experience with foreign teachers and so started to work in collaboration with local schools and other stakeholders. We provide different activities with them mostly related to language skills and cultural diversity. At London Club we intend to develop activities for the community together with our students. Through partnerships with schools and local organizations, we are able to reach a larger number of young people interested in participating in our activities. Bursa benefits of its location in Turkey in a way to reach a larger community. Located only 2 hours far from Istanbul, Bursa is an easy city to reach by any kind of transportation. Based between mountains and sea, Bursa also offers to Turkish community and foreigners a diversity of events and activities. Known as the green city because of its extensive parks, makes Bursa also a potential city for different outdoor activities. London Club intends to use all this advantages to increase a huge participation from young people in diverse international mobilities. The idea of establishing London Club was first made when one of the founders was in the UK under an educational programme which allowed to have the first cross-border with other people but also with other organizations. After that, the desire of keeping touch with the people met in the experience, made our founders find a solution that would allow them to travel and visit each other but in a way that the travel expenses wouldn't be that high. Through this thoughts, they started having the first experiences as coordinating exchange of people under different projects or activities that would give them the opportunity to discover and learn more in a cheaper way. After establishing London Club, our founders decided that the best way to help students and newcomers improving their English was through having their practice directly to native teachers and non-turkish speaking people. To make it possible, London Club established an agreement with AIESEC to which have been in progress for over 5 years. Thanks to this partnership, London Club has had the chance of meeting different partners from various parts of the World as well the opportunity to create s with different organizations in order to improve the work quality (including some visits abroad to different educational institutions to observe the best methodologies applied in different countries). London Club has already participated in a couple of Erasmus+ programme activities (Youth Exchanges) where was also possible to establish the first agreements and partnerships under this actions. We expect partnerships to be active in the future in order to make a better and professional job while teaching and empowering others. At national level, London Club has gain experience by joining different activities related to youth and education all around Turkey. While joinşng conferences and different programmes also gives us the possibility to create connections, s and partner to in the future work together in prol of the ones who desire a better education. As local level, London Club is now of the most famous organizations in Bursa and of the most trustable and respected.