About International Friendship Force

In general International Friendship Force was established by the President Jimmy Carter to promote friendship and peace in the world. For the moment there are 72 member countries and the headquarter is in Atlanta. This program brings these diverse people together, into one another's cultures and even homes, to share one-of-a-kind experience not available to regular tourists. Through these exciting personal encounters, strangers become friends- and if we can build a world of friendship, we can build a world of peace. Members are ordinary people who travel or host in the name of global friendship.

There are 10 FF clubs in Turkey; 5 in Izmir, 2 in Ankara, 1 in Denizli, Bursa and Kayseri. Urla FF Club, under the management of Atlanta, hosting and visiting the member clubs. So far we hosted 7 clubs; Memphis, Connecticut, Wisconsin from the USA, Bristol, Cornwall from England, Berlin from Germany, Szekesfervar from Hungry, Xlapa from Mexico and Trujillo from Peru. We visited Wisconsin, Connecticut in the USA, Cornwall in England, Berlin in Germany, Cape Town in the South Africa.

The members of our club wished to utilise the time between the visits by producing different projects for the benefit of our town. We worked on 2 projects:

• 1-'Urla Through the Eyes of an Artist' which was an European Union Project. The purpose of this project was to discover the hidden talents of women over 50 years old.
• 2-Our second project is called ''Our Home 4'' which is under the umbrella of the ''Gündoğdu Çağdaş Yaşam Gönüllüleri Vakfı- The Foundation of Modern Society Volunteers. They believe that children are the future of our country and they deserve a good education and social skills. Hence, their mission is supporting the less fortunate families-with intelligent, industrious and talented children- who emigrated from East or South East Anatolia. As the Urla Branch volunteers we assist the appropriate families; helping the High School and elementary school students- behind their classes- and senior students by tutoring. Also we extend our support to other students by providing scholarships, dormitory rooms. In short we try removed the obstacles preventing children from schooling. Addition to this, we try to help them to acquire social skills to adjust themselves easily to society. On the other hand we work with the mothers teaching them new skills and help them to earn some money by selling their products. We also have field trips to take the families to selected places where they do not go by themselves