We continue to work vigorously to heal Hatay. After the aid we provided in the first two trips, we returned to Hatay under the leadership of our Founding President Zehra Öney, taking into account the ongoing needs with the advent of spring. Thanks to the support sent by our donors, we were able to amplify our power and reach a total of 10,000 people by the end of our third trip.
For five days, we distributed underwear, tracksuits, hygiene products, toys, children’s books, food and snacks, tent floor pads, adult diapers, and slippers sent by Bridge to Türkiye Fund, P&G, DELL Technologies, Hitay Holding, Figo Para, Twigy, Rene Saman, #beraberiyileşeceğiz, düşyeri, Jules Verne, Piyalepaşa Otomotiv and Happiness İstanbul. As we continued to set up our tents and distribute basic needs in Altınözü, Yayladağı, Samandağ, Defne, and Antakya we kept listening to the problems the families were facing and identified changing needs expanding our knowledge about the region.
Public and private institutions from all over Türkiye continue to offer their assistance to Hatay in their respective areas of expertise. Trucks lined up for kilometers carry rubble from collapsed buildings and sometimes slow down traffic in the city center while bulldozers flatten the ground behind the removed rubble. While container cities are being set up, people still try to improve their living conditions in their tents.
In the next step, it is necessary to support individuals psychosocially and address psychological problems that may arise as people find shelter and meet their basic needs. As the Woman in Technology Association, we will focus on our main objective at this stage, which is education, and implement our Mobile Campus and Academy Project in Antakya to heal Hatay. In the coming months, in addition to providing our hybrid training programs in Hatay, we will provide our programs online to 11 provinces in the disaster area.
Our Mobile Campus and Academy, which will be established on a 6.000 sqm area in front of the Progen Seed Factory will be a multipurpose, multifunctional, easy-to-reach technological living and interaction space that will be the heart of education, arts, sports, social activities, and R&D for children, youth, and women. The Mobile Campus and Academy will transform children into creative and interdisciplinary thinkers, young people into experts, and women into producers and business owners. In addition to the education, the Mobile Campus and Academy will serve as an area supporting the psychological healing of Hatay with play tents for children and expert psychologists.
The implementation of this project will create opportunities for individuals living in the disaster area to heal psychologically and emotionally with a holistic approach, and to raise competent and productive individuals to contribute to the economic development and rapid and stable recovery of the disaster area. Moreover, employment opportunities will be created for the personnel working during the project, who will be residents of Hatay. The Mobile Campus and Academy will not only add value to Hatay, but also will pave the way for the emergence of role models and innovative start-ups in the region, and will serve as a meeting point where NGOs can cooperate.
In the Mobile Campus and Academy we will establish, we will offer career, e-commerce, sustainability, climate and environment, disaster and fire safety, first aid, foreign language, robotics, and coding for children in addition to the perspectives, technical, and soft skill training programs that we already offer to our students at Woman in Technology Association. We will also help our university and postgraduate students join the workforce in our more than 160 corporate members. Within the scope of our Mobile Campus and Academy project, starting from Antakya, we aim to reach more than 20,000 young individuals and women and touch the lives of more than 10,000 children in two years.
Having met the minimum need for tents and basic needs, our goal is to create a space that takes a holistic approach to individuals for two years to help heal traumas that may arise especially in children, youth, and women, and make them competent individuals who can take control of their lives. Even if the type of work and assistance change based on current needs, we are willing more than ever to help with the determination in our hearts. We continue to adjust our course in a flexible, harmonious, and solution-oriented manner against any difficulties we face. Because with the bonds we have established, the hands we have held, the people we have talked with, and the challenges we have overcome together in Hatay so far, we know that ” We are Strong Together.”
