GENÇTUR is active in the field voluntary service for 36 years. Our main activity area is short term international voluntary work camps.
We send around 500 Turkish volunteers to 85 countries all over the world and receive around 300 foreign volunteers in our short term projects in Turkey.
GENÇTUR is also active in EU – Youth Programs since 2002. We have got our first accreditation in 2007 when Turkey became a program country. Then we started to deal with EU Youth in Action program. During the first term of our accreditation period, we have sent 25 EVS volunteers abroad both for short and long term.
In the following second and third terms, we have increased our activeness and have sent 225 EVS volunteers in total. At the same period we have also started to host EVS volunteers in our office and hosted 7 volunteers from 6 different countries.
We are promoting EVS among young people and acting as an information and counselling office. We interview a big number of candidate EVS volunteers and keep their files open during their EVS Project and until the end of the project. We are supporting all our volunteers from their first step until they finish their EVS.
GENÇTUR is well known among young people and trusted. Apart from our corporate WEB site we organize info days to promote EVS or distribute face to face information in our office. We have 1 EVS general coordinator, 1 EVS info officer and 1 Turkish speaking foreign EVS volunteer in the office.
Each candidate volunteer has to send us a CV, a general motivation letter and an application form. We open a file for each applicant and then call them for an interview which lasts around 1 hour. During this interview we explain them what a real EVS means, the whole EVS process, how to find projects, how to write a motivation letter and a CV, etc. and answer all their questions regarding EVS.
The taken notes during the interview can be shared with the coordinating or hosting organisations if requested when they want to know something spesific about the volunteer they are interested in hosting.
We supply a “Sending Organisation Support Document” for each interviewed volunteer which should be used for their applications together with their CVs and motivation letters. This document contains GENÇTUR’s contact info and the volunteers’ datas.
We have a big block of files of candidate volunteers and an e-mail list of them to promote open positions.
After acceptation of a candidate volunteer, we immediately send our mandate and PIF (Partner Identification Form) to the coordinating / hosting organisation together with a “To Do List To Host a Turkish Volunteer”.
Following the National Agency’s approval , we send “To Do List After Project Appoval For Turkish Volunteers”.
Then we start supporting both the coordinating / hosting organisation and the volunteer. We immediately register the volunteer in CIGNA insurance system and help them to prepare necessary documents for their visa process.
By the mean time if there is any Pre Departure Training organized by the Turkish NA, we direct the volunteers there. Otherwise we response all their questions about their EVS process before they depart. We support the volunteers and partners in all aspects.
Each volunteer is requested to send a monthly report during their project and the hosting organisations are regularly contacted.
