IVSA (International Veterinary Students’ Association) was founded in 1951 as a non-profit organization and is the largest veterinary student association in the world. IVSA aims to improve the standard of international veterinary education through the exchange of ideas, knowledge, and culture. As the IVSA Cyprus team, we organize various events for veterinary faculty students to ensure they learn while having fun, socialize, and gain valuable experience.

IVSA Cyprus is the first and only IVSA establishment in Cyprus. We were officially accepted into the association on January 18, 2020, during the 38th IVSA Symposium held in Rabat, Morocco, where we were represented by Kaan Kaşıkçı (Founding IVSA President) and Melisa Aksaç (Former IVSA President). As part of the IVSA family, we began this journey to represent both Southern and Northern Cyprus. Although we are a relatively young community, we continue to increase our membership and activities every year. At the beginning of each fall semester, we open membership enrollment, and by the end of the fall semester, we generally recruit junior students to join our management team. Our management team consists of positions such as president, vice president, exchange officer, event coordinator, secretary, member relations officer, committee coordinator, graphic design officer, and treasurer. For each position, we open applications once a year for junior students, and the selection process is carried out through interviews conducted by our management team. Junior students learn the functioning and management of the team, with the aim of forming our management team in the coming years.

This year, our management team is composed of our president, Dilara Atış; vice president, Cemre Pusat; event coordinator, Omay Güngör; secretary, Aybüke Şevval Polat; member relations officer, İrem Ekşi; committee coordinator, Yaren Sezer; and graphic design officer, Sude Selin Kılıç. Our advisor and mentor, Prof. Dr. İsfendiyar Darbaz, who is always by our side and continuously supports us, also plays an active role in our team.

The core missions of IVSA Cyprus include contacting our professors to organize symposiums that contribute to students’ academic development, facilitating domestic and international exchange programs to help students get to know other veterinary faculties and cultures, fostering unity among students through social programs, contributing to students’ practical skills through workshops focused on the profession, and organizing activities to improve animal welfare. These include donating food for street animals and shelter dogs, building and distributing shelters, administering internal and external parasite treatments, and visiting shelters.

Among our activities are the traditional Halloween masked ball we organize each year, welcome parties at the beginning of each semester, necropsy workshops conducted with sea turtle conservation associations, exchange programs organized with IVSA teams from Ankara, France, Romania, and Aydın, shelter visits where we donate food, the symposium on Current Approaches in Equine Medicine, Sustainable Fertility Management in Dairy Farms, Fundamental Approaches in Feline and Canine Clinical Practice, Wildlife and Veterinary Medicine, tree-planting days, horseback riding, and beach clean-up events. As a team, we strive to enrich and increase the number of our events each year. We will continue our activities in the 2024–2025 academic year with the support of our university.