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Youth Camp for Young Women from Greece and Turkey
The Center for Research and Action on Peace and WINPEACE have been working hard for attaining peace and harmonious co-existence of the two neighboring peoples of Greece and Turkey.

One initiative that supports this undertaking is youth camps. The camps are meeting places for the regions young women who will soon become the core of tomorrow’s society knowledgeable and active leaders.

This project is original due to its combination of educational, cultural, and environmental issues based on the principles of democracy and peaceful co-existence of the two peoples. Ideally, this existence will lead to the sustainable peace through out the South Eastern Mediterranean region.

Due to its early implementation of the European Awareness Local Scenario Workshop, an innovation program, the Youth Camp is considered original and trend-setting.

The youth camp project has four phases and occurred over three days. First, students from Greece and Turkey will visit each other’s capitals, Istanbul and Athens, in order to attain a better understanding of each culture. A first one-week visit occurred in July 2000, in Istanbul. WINPEACE-Turkey organized the accommodation for ten Greek camp attendees from Athens College in Greece. This group met with twenty-one students from Rovertios School in Istanbul. The program was original and rich in topics and activities. The attendees collaborated on specific issues to discuss over the duration of the meeting, paying special attention the aims of the efforts to learn more about each other. The issue decided was titled – Maritime Pollution and Peaceful Resolution of Problems in the North East Mediterranean Sea for Sustainable Peace in 2020. 

The issue was then divided into three sub-themes: 1) Sea pollution in Istanbul; 2) Sea pollution in North-East Mediterranean Sea, and; 3) Sea pollution and peaceful resolution of conflict/tensions.

The final developments of the collaboration was as follows:

  • Accurate information to the public, beginning from elementary school;
  • Complaint letters to governments for not respecting international law;
  • Adoption of stricter laws for cargo and ships (use of filters, protection measures/security on ships);
  • Stricter pollution control for ships;
  • Implementation of environmental laws ratified by Greece and Turkey that will reduce pollution in the seas, and;
  • Establishment of a joint committee for dealing with common environmental problems with participation of academics, researchers, students, NGOs and international organizations. 
The second phase of the youth camp, other sub-themes were discussed: 1) energy; 2) water management, 3) air-pollution, and; 4) waste. The groups developed the following regarding these issues with the voting counts in parenthesis:
  • Heating and cooling of buildings using recycled water for the necessary energy – a system of the ancient Greeks (13 votes).
  • Planting one tree for every child born (12 votes) to assist in water conservation.
  • Creation of an ‘ideal house’ – a residence using renewed sources of energy for the production of electric power; is equipped with mechanisms of recycled rain water; recycling methods for trash (12 votes).
  • Managing waste by stepped-up mechanisms of recycling paper and plastics (10 votes).
  • Better means of public transportation.
   The students wanted to disseminate the conclusions of the project to the relevant authorities of both countries and to international organizations in order to raise awareness of the public to begin practical implementation of developments. A web-page was developed at Rovertios for this dissemination and to have contact with the European Union Directorate.

All participants were extremely please with the efforts and outcome of the camp.