Post-Earthquake Relief Efforts

After 6 February earthquake disaster, we have been working to heal the wounds with all our efforts. From the first moment, we provided shelter, heating, essential food and hygiene support to the citizens affected by the earthquakes with our 6 Fireflies (Mobile Education Truck) and two fixed activity centers in the region at the time of the earthquakes. We deployed all of our 17 Fireflies to the region in the period following the earthquake and they are still continuing their activities.

TEGV Volunteers in Earthquake Region

Our volunteers all around Türkiye lined up to take part from the first day to give hope to our children in the earthquake region. The volunteers travelled to the region and started to carry out Social-Emotional Based Disaster Activities with the children. Until today, more than 1,000 volunteers have supported our quality education activities in the region.

With Our New Activity Centres, We Gave Hope To More Children

With the aim of reaching more children in the earthquake region, we have been working to increase the number of our activity centers since the first day. In this period, with the support of our donors, we started the establishment of new Firefly Activity Centers, which were in our fleet since the 1999 Marmara earthquake, and immediately deployed them to the region. In addition to our Fireflies, we established container city activity centers for the first time in line with regional conditions in order to ensure that education is not interrupted under any circumstances.
The establishment of our Activity Centre in Diyarbakır was completed as a result of the devoted efforts of our teams and TEGV Diyarbakır Bank ABC Activity Center opened its doors to children with an official ceremony held on 6 December 2023.

Fireflies

Six of our Fireflies, which travel throughout Anatolia to provide quality education to children all over Türkiye, were in the region during the earthquake on 6 February.
The other Fireflies of our fleet were also deployed to the region immediately after the disaster and provided shelter, heating, hygiene and essential food needs of our citizens in the region. In this period, we started the establishment of our new Fireflies with the support of our corporate donors and immediately deployed them to the earthquake region.
Since 6 February, with the donations;
MediaMarkt Türkiye 4, Tırsan 2, Migros 1, Pınar 1, Istanbul Rotary Club 1 supported the construction of our new Firefly.
Moreover, Shane Larkin Foundation, Algida, Domino's Türkiye, Şölen, You Stiftung/Porsche, Turkish Philanthropy Funds sponsored our Fireflies’ operational needs with their donations.

Container Activity Centers

Following the earthquake, we established container activity centers for the first time in our history in order to provide quality education to children in the region. In this context, we completed the installation of 12 container activity centers with the support of Shell Türkiye and 3 container activity centers with the support of Vehbi Koç Foundation and made them available for the use of our children in the region.

Post-Earthquake Response Activities

- Our Volunteer Consultant, family therapist Yegan Özcan, conducted an online training on psychological first aid principles titled "Ways to Understand the Child, Avoiding Harm and Healthy Communication in Crisis and Disaster Conditions" for 360 volunteers and field staff.
- FlowQ Family Therapy Center, which voluntarily supports our Psychosocial Support activities, prepared a "Guide for Communication with Children Affected by Earthquake" for our field volunteers, which can be used by parents, family elders and teachers. CLICK HERE to access the guide.
- We received more than 500 applications to our call for psychoeducational support volunteers. Our volunteers worked to reduce the effects of the trauma they experienced by carrying out psychoeducational activities for families and teachers in the impact area of our Firefly and various activities with children.
- We completed the establishment of a library in Antakya Emlak Konut Container City, the furnishing of which was financed by our earthquake fund and the books of which were provided by the fund created by TEGV employees.

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With All Our Strength, We Were There. We Are There!

We would like to thank Ayça Arıcan, Bilgehan Yoldaş, Burak Tunçel and Fethi Karaduman who provided volunteer support for the preparation of our video.

Click video for the summary video of our activities in the post-earthquake period.