Nur Shoop
Youth Council Co-Chair
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Nur Shoop was born as the middle child to a family in Turkey. Her mother had been born in Egypt and her father, a representative to N.A.T.O., had been born in Cyprus. The family lived in Turkey until Nur was twelve years old. Her parents were multi lingual and she was exposed to different cultures and languages throughout her early years. Living in a country that connects Europe and Asia, she traveled in Europe with her family during summer vacations. Her favorite childhood memories are of traveling to Cyprus to her grandmother's large, picturesque working farm.

When she was twelve her family migrated to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where she was pressed to learn English in a hurry. It was difficult to adjust to a new culture and a new language. After mastering English at age nineteen she became a tutor for others who had to learn English as a second language. She grew up in the Seacoast area and as an adult became a naturalized citizen.

Nur has a degree in education and owns her own preschool with emphasis on a multicultural curriculum. She was a foster mother to a special needs child for fifteen years. Nur sings in Con Tutti, a group of about one hundred men and women singing music from all over the world. She believes as Kahlil Gibran does, "Music is the language of the spirit; it opens the secret of life bringing peace, abolishing strife."

She is an activist. She is co-clerk of the New England Yearly Meeting (Quaker) Racial, Social and Economic Justice Committee, a member of the American Friends Service Committee of New Hampshire support committee, a member of Seacoast Occupy and of Seacoast Overpass Light Brigade, and treasurer of the Seacoast NAACP Youth Council. She volunteers at the Dover Friendly Kitchen (the soup kitchen in Dover, N.H.) and is a weekly volunteer at the Strafford County Jail. As Gibran says, "You give but little when you give of your possessions; it is when you give of yourself that you truly give." Nur currently resides in Kittery, Maine with her two energetic and mischievous dogs, Cecil the mutt and Fagan the wheaten terrier.