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Reach Out '08

Click here do download the Summer 2008 Reachout application.
For more information, or to mail in your application, please contact our leaders for this year, Berrak and Ege.

Our trip which comprises of two parts will start in a 5-6 day stay in a village near Istanbul. Here, incorporated in a social service activity of the Community Volunteers Organization, we will be doing mostly labor intensive social work such as building/renovating a small library, building a road between the village and the local elementary school, and building a small park. Here, participants will be staying with the local families in 3-4 person groups, and each group will have at least one person who is fluent in Turkish (Prior to our trip we will offer basic Turkish classes which, we believe, the participants will find extremely useful). Following our stay in the village, we will continue to Istanbul and begin the part of our trip which is focused more on culture. In Istanbul we will organize trips to historical sites and popular tourist spots and try to cram the Istanbul experience into 4-5 days which will be quite difficult considering that Istanbul has a history of two thousand years. The participants will gain invaluable cultural experience that they will remember for the rest of their lives. Spending nearly a week in a city which was founded in 667 BC and connects Europe to Asia will definitely leave them with some wonderful and unique memories. 

Reach Out '07

The second Reach Out trip to Turkey took place under the leadership of Yasemin Tarhan'09 and Volkan Doda'10 in the second half of May 2007. Thirteen Yale students from five different countries spent two weeks in Turkey to do community service and to explore the Turkish culture on site. The trip offered a snapshot of two extremes of the Turkish life. Students first spent a week in the rural Kuzucardagi and Karacoglan villages near the province of Kirklareli, where they built a small library for the elementary school with the sponsorship of TEMA and Ulker. They stayed with local host families and had an opportunity to interact with the people of the region directly. In the second part, the group moved to Istanbul to experience the hectic life of this ever-growing metropolis. In Istanbul, the students visited the head offices of two more NGOs, TEGV and Cekul, in order to gain a broader perspective on the NGO structure of the country. They also visited most of the major sights that make the city one of the most lively cultural centers of the world, and enjoyed the Turkish way of entertainment to the fullest in their free time.