One year after the earthquake, Needs Still Persist in Hatay!

One year after the earthquake, Needs Still Persist in Hatay!

After the earthquake in Hatay, we distributed basic hygiene materials, dry food and breakfast products as well as blankets and oil radiators to 1703 households within the scope of the Supporting Families Project due to the challenging winter conditions. Our aim in this project, which we started in October 2023, was to support the basic needs of families living in different districts of Hatay and in settlements far from the centre, such as food, hygiene, radiators and blankets. For this purpose, a total of 7157 people benefited from the basic needs distributions we made in Antakya, Kırıkhan, Reyhanlı, Hassa, Defne, Samandağ, Altınözü and Kumlu districts of Hatay. 76 per cent of the beneficiaries were local people and 24 per cent were refugees.

Our priority in our distributions was women, children, individuals with care responsibilities in the family and people who could not access any support, living in remote settlements of Hatay. Accordingly, we determined the beneficiaries both in cooperation with the municipalities and based on the data we obtained from the field research we conducted. In addition, we also supported people who reached us through other organisations or social media. When we started the distributions, the tent groups had not yet been removed in Hatay, especially in Antakya and Kırıkhan. For this reason, we carried out the distributions in two different ways. In the distributions we made to the houses, we generally followed the method of going around the households, while in the tent clusters, we approached our distribution vehicle to the middle of the tent area and delivered the parcels to the beneficiaries in turn. We took the parcels of the elderly, sick and women to their tents. In cases where this was not possible, beneficiaries supported each other.

When our distributions ended at the end of February, we realised that there were still basic needs in the region. In the calls we made after the distributions, we found that the beneficiaries saying: ‘We were very happy when we learnt that you were distributing hygiene supplies. I bought the hygiene supplies on credit from the market the other day. I’m glad you came. ‘Thanks to you, we realised that we were not forgotten, the contents of the parcel were thought out to the finest detail. Thank you.‘’ ‘We are very satisfied with the products, but our needs continue. We would especially like to benefit from your help with nappies and baby food.‘’ ‘I have no husband, my financial situation is not good and I have 2 children to take care of. These products relieved me a lot,‘’ as feedbacks, in a way proving our observations.