At the beginning of 2013-2014 school year, IHH Humanitarian Relief Foundation initiated a campaign called “Each class has an orphan fellow.” Students studying at primary secondary and high school reached out to their orphan brothers across 5 continents through this campaign organized in collaboration with Ministry of Education and Department of Religious Affairs.

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SOLIDARITY WITH 6.655 ORPHANS

The campaign aims at helping children grow up as helpful, charitable adults with a consciousness that will allow them to be concerned with others’ troubles. It is designed to provide the children who lost their parents due to war, natural disasters, diseases or poverty in Turkey or elsewhere withtheir basic needs such as education, health care, food, clothing and shelter. The campaign, which was widely supported by the students of over 2.000 schools across Turkey, reached out to 6.655 orphans.

THE BIGGEST SUPPORT FROM ISTANBUL

While the biggest support for the campaign came from Istanbul with students from around 400 schools reaching out to 2.180 orphans, the other cities rank as follows:

Bursa, Sakarya, Samsun, Ankara, Konya, Tokat, Konya, Kocaeli, Rize, Trabzon, Aksaray, Sivas, Afyon, Amasya, Gaziantep, Balıkesir, Hatay, Elazığ, Karaman, Kütahya, Çanakkale, Nevşehir, Yozgat, Antalya, Çorum, Şanlıurfa, Adıyaman, Kayseri, Ordu, Zonguldak, Bingöl, Eskişehir, Van, Yalova, Bayburt, Kahramanmaraş, Ağrı, Erzincan, İzmir, Aydın, Çankırı, Düzce, Erzurum, Adana, Giresun, Manisa, Batman, Bitlis, Bolu, Isparta, Karabük, Bilecik, Burdur, Mardin, Niğde, Malatya, Artvin, Denizli, Kilis, Muğla, Kastamonu, Osmaniye, Bartın, Sinop, Tekirdağ, Edirne, Hakkari, Iğdır, Kırıkkale, Kırklareli, Mersin, Muş, Şırnak, Uşak, Diyarbakır, Ardahan, Gümüşhane, Kars, Kırşehir, Siirt.

The top three schools that orchestrated the biggest support for the campaign were Eyup Islamic School, Sultanbeyli Islamic School and Bursa Islamic School in this order.

Although it takes only 90 liras to sponsor an orphan many classrooms collected more than that monthly.

HOW DOES IT WORK?

The campaign is designed to sponsor the children who lost their parents due to war, natural disasters, diseases or poverty in Turkey or elsewhere by providing for their daily needs. Through this scheme friendship and solidarity is established across the continents.

Classrooms across Turkey apply to IHH through their teachers to sponsor an orphan. Their application is accepted by IHH under “Orphan Sponsorship Program” and they get the chance to sponsor an orphan from Palestine, Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen, Syria, Burkina Faso, Somalia, Sierra Leone, Ethiopia, Chad, Ghana, Sudan, Tanzania, Djibuti, Moritania, Malawi, Rwanda, Ache, Pakistan, Arakan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Phlipinnes-Moro, Afghanistan, Patani, Kashmir, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhistan, Tajikistan, Chechnya, Crimea, Georgia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Albania, Preshovo, Bosnia Hercegovina, Equador, Haiti, Turkey, Nepal, Egypt and Zimbabwe. All they need to do is to collect 90 lirarmontly among their classmates.

They can as well sponsor an orphan through Online donation.

For more information about the campaign which aims at helping children grow up as helpful, charitable adults with a consciousness that will allow them to be concerned with others’ troubles go to "www.yetimkardes.org".

Each class who decides to sponsor one or more orphans follow the procedure below:

1. Provided that school administrators know about it, after deciding to join “Every Class has an Orphan Brother” campaign, each classroom represented by their teachers apply at IHH for orphan sponsorship.

2. The standard procedure of getting and filling a hard copy form or doing it online at www.yetim.ihh.org.tr. After filling it out, hard copy forms should be faxed to 0(212) 621 70 51 or mailed to Büyük Karaman Cd. Taylasan Sk. No:3 PK:34230 Fatih/İstanbul.

After that classroom gets in touch with IHH Orphan Care Coordination Centre at +90 (212) 631 21. Each class can select the country or region from where they want to support an orphan out of 42 countries and regions in Orphan Sponsorship Program.

3. The class collects 90 liras.

4. A student representative or their teacher can settle the payment of that money through money order, or transfer to IHH bank accounts or in cash by coming to the IHH offices and noting down that it is “Donation for Orphan Sponsorship”.

5. IHH sends out “Orphan Info Sheet” about the country, name, age and family background including a picture of the orphan for whom the class is appointed as the sponsor to the email address provided in the application form the class has filled out.

6. After receiving “Orphan Info Sheet” you can follow orphan info at www.ihh.org.tr/yetimlerim. In order to get access to the page, the student/teacher who filled out the form needs to sign up for the page.

The number of schools that is participating in the campaign and the number of orphans they are sponsoring are as follows: