Adnan Çelik Promotes Youth Development in Diyarbakır

On 11 April 2010 Sabancı Foundation's "Turkey's Changemakers" program hosts Adnan Çelik, an elementary school teacher, who develops projects on non-violence among youth.

Adnan Çelik is an elementary school teacher in Kulp in Diyarbakır, which is a small town in Southeastern Turkey. He works for the youth in Diyarbakır and tries to bring them a positive perspective. Adnan Çelik has prepared projects, organized festivals, written books and worked as the editor of a local web site for the 5 years that he has worked in Kulp. He develops projects to prevent negative impacts of terror incidents on the youth in Diyarbakır and works with several NGOs such as Educational Volunteers Foundation of Turkey (TEGV) and Community Volunteers Foundation (TOG).

Adnan Çelik also established the first local branch of Community Volunteers. He prepared two projects, "Eco-Schools" and "Green Box", to raise awareness in schools on the environment. Another one of Çelik's project s aims to prevent violence among the youth through non-violent actions. Adnan Çelik also suggested the idea of organizing a "Cocoon Cultural Festival" in Kulp, where the half of the cocoon production in Turkey is made.

Currently Community Volunteers in Kulp has more than 200 volunteers. Adnan Çelik's project about preventing violence among youth through non-violent actions was selected as the best practice in "Best Practices in Education Conference" organized by Education Reform Initiative, a project of the İstanbul Policy Center based at the Sabanci University. With the Boğaziçi University, Adnan Çelik also coordinated "Peace Starts at the Individual Level Summer Project" in the summer of 2009 where 100 children participated in workshops on peace education.