EARTHQUAKE RELIEF AID TO STUDENTS

Dear donor,

It has been more than 10 months but the wounds of the earthquake have not yet healed. Main needs of food and clothing were somehow met but shelter is still a  problem. And needs of establishing a new life, needs for comfort and survival are far from being met.

After the immediate relief efforts, it is important to support the emotional, psychological and physical well-being of the wounded society. With this in mind, CYDD opened a Community Center in Hatay Samandag near a tent town of 400 tents. All through the summer the center served in three tents and two containers the children and families living in the vicinity. 

85 volunteer scholarship university students from various CYDD branches lived in the center, rotating every two weeks. One container served as the computer coding workshop as the laptops could be kept secure there. The three tents hosted activities like painting, reading, music, theater, writing and debates. Street games and sports were also part of the 525 hours of activities throughout the summer.

With the start of the school year, the center will continue to operate on the weekends with the computer coding and reading workshops and the free game activity tent. Volunteers at the center will be helping the students with their school work during the study hours in the afternoon. At night movies will be shown to the habitants of the nearby tent city.

Our instructors are all volunteers but we have to pay for their living expenses and food. So our community center needs your support.

Thank you..

Dear donor,

We are proud to announce that with donations from all over the world, including yours, we have  reached out to 2600 more students that the earthquake displaced and included them in our scholarship portal. These students had to leave their hometowns and schools to move to another to start a new life with their families and need all kinds of support.We will be supplying them with scholarships until their graduation whether they are in high school or in university. Some also had to leave all their belongings including their laptops in their damaged homes which were demolished without them being permitted to enter. We will be supplying them with computers whenever we find extra funds.

In the first weeks, we also managed to send three trucks of humanitarian aid to earthquake stricken areas and our Çukurova branch which was not affected by the earthquake made rounds every weekend to reach families living outside of the towns, mainly in rural areas of Antakya, Defne and Samandag.Three of our branches in Iskenderun and Hatay were heavily damaged and had to stop their operations.

First weekend of June, we opened our CYDD Community Center in Samandag which is near a tent town of 400 tents and will be serving all children and will be run by volunteers and CYDD university students in their senior year which will rotate every week. Even though everyone will be volunteer, we still need a budget to transport them, supply food and other material needs.We will be giving you more info in our next report and needless to say we look forward to your support.

Thank you..

Links:

• https://www.cydd.org.tr/