Civic & Social Organization - İstanbul, , Turkey
Soyop – Young Pioneers Society is a group of young people who gathered together in order to contribute building of a better world on the basis of universal values of human rights by promoting democracy and dialogue in Turkey. In order to achieve our aims, we attach a special importance to dialogue among various social groups as we believe that democracy and justice can be fully ensured only in the societies where diversity is considered as the source of abundance.\\Based on those ideas, Soyop has been founded in youth field with the diverse participation of young people who have different social, cultural, political, ethnical, educational backgrounds and a wide range of interests. Most of the members of Soyop are undergraduate students at various subjects such as law, medicine, architecture, and sociology..\\As being an NGO advocating human rights, we firstly want to raise consciousness regarding violations of human rights because we know that if people are not aware of their fundamental rights, the governments will be more likely to ignore those rights.\\Main activities of our group are based on international youth exchanges which are generally supported by inter-governmental organizations like EU. By now, we implemented 11 youth projects with the participation of more than 69 young people from Soyop in the various countries of Europe including Bulgaria, Belgium, Latvia, Romania, Estonia, Poland, France, Italy, Bosnia and Herzegovina; and by this way, we give to young people an opportunity to understand different applications of human rights in a multicultural, informal and educational environment. As another significant example, we also hosted about 35 young people from 5 European countries consisting of Turkey, Croatia, France, Italy and Romania in Istanbul within a youth exchange about the xenophobia by considering multi-ethnical dimension of the Istanbul city.\\In a nutshell, this is the society of young pioneers: participate, enjoy, and do more!