President Vural Çakır published an information note about our foundation’s post-disaster efforts:
Vural Çakır: “After the disaster, we reorganized our main area of expertise by including emergency aid and early recovery in cooperation with our partner organizations.
While our social research team shares post-disaster figures and preliminary results of the SME rapid assessment with relevant organizations, our field and program management groups focus on emergency relief efforts.
After the earthquake, we identified population movements and needs on a regional basis, including the immigrant population, and shared them with the relevant institutions.
Our social research team recently shared the evaluation of 300 enterprises, the first stage of the needs analysis, which determines the damage status of MSMEs.
Thus, we would like to design a map and organize open-source support efforts for small businesses. Our Şanlıurfa team evaluates the situation of the beneficiaries we previously supported regarding business and employment.
We continue our emergency aid efforts in three areas. In the first days after the earthquake, we distributed blankets and sponge mattresses in Şanlıurfa and circulated blankets, hygiene materials, and tents in Hatay. Together with the Defne district, the number of tents we have delivered in Hatay reached 150. Our Hatay representative and colleagues from Istanbul and Şanlıurfa participate in these tent deliveries. We supply tents from companies in Ankara.
In the coming days, we will be able to work on hygiene materials, especially for women in Gaziantep. Although there is no main concentration in terms of emergency aid at this stage, earthquake survivors settled in different provinces constitute another important need group. Small local campaigns can support this segment.
This is how we try to support Validebağ Teachers’ House, which hosts earthquake-affected teachers. We also believe that with the completion of rescue and shelter works, early recovery and livelihood efforts will gain weight.
For this, we aim to establish community solidarity centers, especially in tent and container cities, in cooperation with various organizations. We continue to work on how we can increase our capacity and how we can contribute more.”