Youth Accumulation Association
“Together with Youth, a Better Life for Young People...”
Youth Accumulation Association was established in 2006 in Mush, Turkey by a group with the aim to contribute to the social and personal development of young people.
The four main objectives of the association are:
- To enhance respect, friendship and tolerance among young people and to help them to become conscious individuals
- To support the talents of young people by providing different trainings
- To help young people to successfully participate and to harmonise not only in the business life but in the civil life as well
- To raise awareness amongst young people about cancer and any other kind of health threat
In order to realise our objectives, we cooperate with families, local authorities, related ministries, primary schools, high schools and universities and we develop projects with them. In the last eight years, we have organised many local, national and international projects and activities together with our stakeholders.
We have carried out many international projects in Mush under the European Union Youth Programme Education Center and Youth Programmme (National Agency) and enabled participation of young people from Mush in these projects as well as in other projects that were carried out abroad. International projects that were carried out in cooperation with various youth organisations from different countries are:
- Raising Awareness of Young People about Cancer, April 2008
- We are Coming, April 2008
- Young People Meet With Art, August 2009
- European Citizenship, October 2010
From the grant provided by the Embassy of Japan, we obtained a mammography vehicle for the Healthy Development project. With the help of the protocol that was signed with the Provincial Directorate of Health, our vehicle started with breast cancer screening in 12 different cities. Our aim is to screen 4000 women every year within this project.
International Blooming Plant Oncology Days - one of the most important international activities of ours for protecting children and young people against cancer, was realised in 2007 in Mush for the first time. Each year the International Blooming Plant Oncology Days are being organised with a different theme. Among the participants there are representatives of public institutions, non-governmental organisations, youth centers, international institutions as well as scientists. The event has the characteristic of a platform where the best practices and experiences about combating cancer are being shared.
EURODESK is an European information network which provides information about the European opportunities and activities for young people in education and youth field. In 2010, our application to become EURODESK Local Relay was approved and in April 2010 we become EURODESK Local Relay in Mush.
Our Memberships:
- EURODESK Turkey Network
- European Cancer Patient Coalition
- Hand in Hand against Cancer Federation
- Turkish Youth Federation
Our website:
http://www.gencbirikim.org/
ECCAM 2014
Wear Blue and Send Your Photo
For ECCAM we prepared a blue photo frame and made the announcements to our volunteers and followers on our social media pages. We had asked them to take photos wearing blue clothes and to send them in to us. We then put all these pictures into our photo frame and shared them out on our Facebook page. With every photo shared we provided some information about colorectal cancer.
The campaign was widely disseminated in a very short time. The Turkish Ministry of Development, who was informed about our campaign prepared a video on our awareness-raising campaign to support the activity.
Facebook Photo Album
The video by the Ministry of Development:
"I’m Aware of Colorectal Cancer" Activity
Together with our volunteers, we created a dance group that performed in Kugulu Park which is very important place in the Turkish capital – Ankara. The show was held on the 8th of March (International Women’s Day).
A lot of public institutes and non-governmental organisations, including the Department of Cancer Control of the Ministry of Health and Public Health Agency of Turkey supported the activity.
In this activity we promoted the song I'm Stronger than Cancer written and composed by one of our volunteers Irmak Ayaoglu. We prepared a video for this song as well.
We had wide national media coverage for this performance as seen in the links below.
http://www.cumhuriyet.com.tr/haber/saglik/48841/Kansere_dans_ederek__dur__dediler.html
http://www.ntvmsnbc.com/id/25503171/
The video for the song will be soon loaded to our youtube page (www.youtube.com/gencbirikimdernegi)
Change Your Cover Pictures or Profile Pictures on Facebook and Twitter
An other activity that we did via social media was to change the cover pictures and/or the profile pictures. We have asked our association's volunteers and followers in social media to change their cover or profile pictures with the logo of European Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month during the month of March.
Approximately 500 people supported the campaign.
Profile Picture
Cover Picture
Dress in Blue
Our volunteers wore blue clothes in very busy places both in Istanbul and Ankara in order to raise people's awareness about colorectal cancer.
Health Literacy Training
We gave Health Literacy Training both in Istanbul and in Ankara from the 6th-12th March and 23rd-29th of March. We provided the participants with basic health training and information about colorectal cancer.