İLKYAR
Ilkyar is a volunteer based organization in Ankara, Turkey that reaches out to elementary schools in rural and underdeveloped parts of Turkey. The organization was found in 1978 and has donated (as of December 2003) more than 145000 education materials (including books, blackboards, sets of encyclopedias, computers, telescopes, overhead projectors, microscopes, TVs, video sets) to 803 schools. Besides providing the rural schools with education materials, Ilkyar volunteers also regularly visit a number of public elementary boarding schools (YIBOs) every year. During these visits, Ilkyar volunteers spend time with students for two days organizing entertainment activities, playing games, and performing educational experiments.
Ilkyar volunteers are mostly university students and unversity faculty, mainly from the Middle Eastern Technical University (METU) in Ankara. The president of Ilkyar (who is also one of the four founders) is Professor Huseyin Vural from Mechanical Engineering Department in METU.