Hello big IFRC family, I am Onur from Turkey. I am the corporate communication executive of the Turkish Red Crescent Youth university club at my school. Before the first Coronavirus case was diagnosed in our country, we had already started to inform people and have tried to raise awareness about the SARS-CoV-2 virus by social media. When the very first case was diagnosed schools were closed by the government so our volunteers went to their hometown, to their families. Later, as the number of cases and deads increased, a curfew became to apply for elderly and chronic patients. However, we have used this condition in our favor. Our volunteers communicate with us from their own cities about who needs help and we have directly informed the Red Crescent Youth which closest to the people that we know need our help. In this way, we made sure that people had help from us. In the next days, the long-term curfew has announced in the metropolitan cities, we were always in the streets for our people in coordination with the state. We started daily bread distributions and with the arrival of the month of Ramadan, bread and food aid is distributed by asking door to door to meet the needs of our elders and asked for their requests and made their shopping. In these days the support of our young volunteers is enormous. The only thing that motivates us and warms our hearts is the thanks that we see in the eyes of people even we don’t hear them.

Onur Çakıcı
Turkish Red Crescent
May 7, 2020