Empowerment of Youth for E-transformation of Turkey Project is implemented in partnership with Youth Association for Habitat, Microsoft Turkey and United Nations Development Programme since March 2005. The Project has aimed to increase the number of ICT literates mainly among young people for them to get actively involved in e-governance mechanisms in the country.
The implementation methodology of the project focuses on youth voluntarism; more than 600 young people from 63 cities covering every region in the country volunteered to provide basic computer and internet skills for their peers. Therefore, the project has provided reported trainings to more than 40.000 young people as well as children, women, civil servant, local decision makers, community leaders, small enterprises including physically and mentally disabled persons, military servants and imprisoned persons.

The project aims to increase the capacities of the local youth councils, different organizations, local governments and NGOs so that their members and volunteers can multiply trainings as voluntary advocators of the project. Hence, the project partners with a number of local and regional institutions, which in return benefit the project with human capacities and infrastructure.

The academies established with local governments provide trainers’ trainings; besides the centre in Istanbul is planned to provide trainings for Turkish youth and young people from neighbouring countries by 2010 as the Youth Leadership Academy. Multi-partnership perspective of the project enables effective usage of the project budget and grants the sustainability of the program.

The project website (www.bilenlerbilmeyenlerebilgisayarogretiyor.net) provides daily information on the activities and trainings. Besides, the experience gained is shared among global ICT centers’ network: telecenter.org members.

Whereas the results of the impact study of the project reflects the success of the ICT literacy trainings provided, Empowerment of Youth for E-transformation of Turkey Project has been awarded by UNDP, Microsoft and European Commission as a good practice.

Empowerment of Youth for E-transformation of Turkey Project is implemented in 63 cities with the volunteer contribution of more than 600 young trainers.

The target is to cover every 81 city in Turkey with a trainers pool of 1500 young volunteers