Youth and Volunteering Summit at Yeşim Group
Youth and Volunteering Summit at Yeşim Group
A group of approximately 120 volunteer students who received social responsibility and volunteering training in the light of Yeşim Group's “People First” philosophy came together at the “Youth and Volunteering Summit” organized at the Grand Conference Hall.
Yeşim Group brought together a group of approximately 120 students who received social responsibility and volunteering training at the “Youth and Volunteering Summit” within the scope of the “People First in Different Geographies” project, which was initiated five years ago in cooperation with the SosyalBen Foundation under the name “We Support Heartfelt Work for Generations” and has been implemented in Egypt for the last two years in cooperation with the Bursa Contemporary Education and Culture Foundation (ÇEKVAK). Students from Şükrü Şankaya Anatolian High School, Bursa Boys' High School, 3 March Ziya Ulviye Özer Anatolian-Science High School, Automotive Industry Exporters' Association Vocational and Technical Anatolian High School and Uludağ University, who met at Yeşim Group's Bursa headquarters during the May 15-21 Youth Week, presented their volunteering activities throughout the year and produced projects in the workshop for sustainable development goals.
Making the opening speech of the program, Behiç Gülşen, Vice President of Human Resources and Organizational Development of Yeşim Group, said: “This project, which we have implemented in order to keep alive the philosophy of ‘People First’, which came to life with the advice of the late Şükrü Şankaya, one of the founders of Yeşim Group, from his father and which still forms the basis of our corporate culture today, is the most concrete indicator that we look to the future with hope. As Atatürk said, all my hope is in the youth. That hope also includes the understanding of ‘People First'.
Afterwards, Dilek Cesur, Corporate Communications Director of Yeşim Group, talked about the development process of the project and said, “Five years ago, we set out with a dream. We aimed to make the work that our founder started years ago with the understanding of individual philanthropy sustainable by bringing it into a corporate structure. While dreaming of the Youth and Volunteerism Summit, our aim was to bring together the 'People First' philosophy, which forms the basis of our corporate culture, with young people and to spread the awareness of volunteerism and social entrepreneurship. Being here with you today shows once again how well founded this dream is. We aim to increase social benefit by bringing this approach to more students. I believe that we will grow this unity with the participation of many more schools in the coming years and we will continue the Youth and Volunteering Summit as a traditional event.”
Prof. Dr. Rüyam Küçüksüleymanoğlu, Faculty Member of Uludağ University Faculty of Education, who is the project coordinator on behalf of ÇEKVAK, drew attention to the dissemination of volunteering awareness among young people and the understanding of sustainable development goals and said, “When we started this project last year, our goal was to raise awareness of social responsibility and volunteering among high school students in Bursa. By launching the project in Egypt at the same time, we aimed to discover similar and different aspects of young people in different geographies. This year, we took the project one step further and included our university students. We created a mutual learning environment by establishing a mentor-mentee relationship between high school and university students. In addition, we combined this concept with volunteering by focusing on sustainable development goals this year. We have achieved very valuable outputs with the ideas and contributions produced by young people.”
After the opening speeches, students took the stage on behalf of the schools they represent and shared the social responsibility activities they carried out throughout the year. In the afternoon part of the event, students developed creative social benefit projects by conducting group workshops in line with sustainable development goals at Yeşim Academy. At the end of these workshops, the three most successful projects were deemed worthy of an award by the jury.
The summit is expected to become a yearly tradition in the coming years and to include more schools and young people.