Turkish students at the UG have started various fundraising campaigns to help the people in their homeland who have been affected by last week’s earthquakes.
‘I couldn’t sleep for two days because I kept thinking about what happened and because I wanted to do something’, psychology student Zeynep Taylor (21) says. Together with other Turkish students she has set up a GoFundMe-campaign. ‘The aim is to raise 8000 euros.’
The money is transferred to a non-governmental organization, AHBAP, who the students trust to hand out things like water, food and hygienic products to the people who need it the most.
Small donations
‘You should realise that one euro is worth 21 Turkish lira, which can be used to buy twenty breads, a hundred litres of water and a hot meal’, Zeynep says. ‘Even if you don’t have much money, small donations are very important too.’
Zeynep is afraid that help from abroad won’t come fast enough. ‘I have the feeling that people don’t take natural disasters as seriously as they do war. And people are so used to hearing about conflicts in the Middle East, that they’re not that quick to act. But eventually it’s about people needing other people now.’
Family
Student Mehmet Tatlicioglu also realises how much people need each other. He is originally from the hard-hit area of Hatay and knows numerous other families living in the area besides his own.
To offer help as quickly as possible, together with his brother and sister – who are also studying at the UG – he set up a GoFundMe campaign as well.
‘As a family from Hatay we have a special and immediate connection with the city and many of the affected families’, Mehmet writes in the accompanying text. ‘That is why we are launching this fundraising campaign so that we can offer a helping hand to as many affected families as possible. It is precisely because we are so close and in daily contact with our family, friends and acquaintances that our help will contribute greatly.’
The family hopes to raise 25,000 euros.
Share concerns
Some staff members are organizing a casual gathering (Wednesday 4 p.m. at the Harmony Building, room 1312.0013) ‘to give each other the opportunity to share concerns and worries’. In this way, staff and students can try to figure out what kind of support could be the best help and how this support can be arranged during this period.
They particularly welcome students whose family or friends are affected by the earthquakes or who are finding it difficult to cope with earthquake related news and conversations.
Not enough support
Although after the earthquakes, Turkish students were rushing to offer help in all kinds of ways, many of them are disappointed about the lack of response from the UG.
Several PhD students, for example, weren’t happy with the UG’s communication after the earthquakes. ‘I personally think that the UG does much too little much too late, except for a tweet by the president of the board after my email to the communication team and finally a page yesterday’, one of them emailed to UKrant.
Lack of messages
Another student was not only surprised by the lack of messages from the university, but also by the way the university seemed to handle it. The response she received to an email asking for attention for the disaster was ‘super rude and awful’, she felt.
She was told, among other things, that a large organisation cannot focus on all individual nationalities. Unbelievable, she says, since that same organisation does receive extra money from students from non-EU countries. ‘Sending a simple email to show that you are aware of the matter, was not that hard’, she writes.
Sympathy
On Tuesday afternoon, president of the board Jouke de Vries posted a tweet in which he expressed his sympathy for students and employees that have been affected by the earthquakes.
In addition, on Wednesday the UG published a web page which in addition to a word of sympathy also contained a link to the national fundraiser Giro 555 for people who would like to contribute.