The CARAVAN OF HUMANITY was in Turkey in May / June 2021 to help war orphans from Syria to lead a decent life.

The CARAVAN OF HUMANITY received a call for help: Mohammed Ismail, the founder of the “Hope Journey Project”, has been taking care of Syrian orphans who lost their parents in the terrible war of recent years with full commitment. Most of them come from Aleppo, which used to be called “Paris of the Middle East”, but is unfortunately now in ruins. Mohammed set up an orphanage and a school in Idlib / Syria in order to guarantee the orphans there a decent life. But there are also thousands of refugee children living in southern Turkey, including many orphans, for whom Mohammed wants to give them a secure school education, because this is the only way they have long-term chances of a fulfilling future.

It was immediately clear to the CARAVAN OF HUMANITY that this young project needed support. Even more so where there is hardly any outside support in Turkey. That is why we started a call for donations for the orphans in May. Within three weeks we were able to collect over 12 tons of donations in kind and over 20,000 euros in donations.

THE PILLARS OF EFFECT

The special thing about this project are the three pillars of effectiveness: relief goods, donations in kind and joie de vivre. Because part of the team on site were also professional clowns, acrobats and artists who voluntarily accompanied the CARAVAN OF HUMANITY in their relief operation. The war orphans are especially badly emotionally injured and laughter is known to work wonders. Every day the so-called CARAVAN OF THE CLOWNS planned and rehearsed artistic interludes and thus made the children – as well as the adults – forget their difficult everyday lives. “In this way we experienced encounters at eye level. To experience the people so happy and carefree was the best thing for all of us, “ explains initiator and club chairman Pascal Violo.

THE AID GOODS IN TURKEY

In addition, from the end of May to mid-June 2021, the CARAVAN with a team of 9 was mostly on the move between the cities of Adana and Mersin to distribute food parcels in the “camps”. Part of the donation money was used to buy 4,000 kg of food and bundle packages of 20 kg each for families. The packages included staple foods such as rice, pasta, oil, flour and gave people security for several weeks. Many thousands of refugees from Syria have found shelter in these so-called “camps”, including many families and orphans. They all survive there practically without any outside support.

THE DONATIONS IN SYRIA

We are particularly proud that after weeks of negotiations and fears with the Turkish authorities, we finally made the impossible possible: Our truck with the 12 tons of donations in kind got into Syria! (To explain: Unfortunately, Turkey is massively blocking them Help for refugees.) On board the truck were 600 (!) Pairs of new GEA Waldviertler shoes. Mohammed Ismail, the founder of the school for orphans in Syria, was overwhelmed by the generous donation from Austria: “Hopefully the children will carry these shoes on their stony path to a good future.” At this point we would like to thank Heini Staudinger and his company GEA Waldviertler for the great donation – that is the humanity of an Austrian company!