With funding from the Irish Emergency Alliance, Trócaire and the Caritas network in Syria are providing humanitarian assistance to the earthquake affected communities in Syria to ensure they have access to essential basic assistance, safe accommodation and education facilities.
More than 2,000 households will receive urgent financial assistance to meet their basic needs and access temporary accommodation. Another 170 households are being assisted to safely rebuild their homes that will be resilient to future earthquakes. Some 525 people affected by the earthquake are also being provided with access to medical services.
Families left with nothing as homes destroyed
Mother-of-three Habibe (23) suffered severe losses in the earthquake that hit Turkey on February 6. Her house collapsed, leaving her and her children without shelter, but she also lost her source of income as she ran a sewing workshop from her home.
Habibe now lives in a tent in a formal camp in Ovakent, Turkey and is receiving support from Trócaire partner Caritas. Habibe has set up a new sewing workshop inside the camp to earn some money to feed her family.
It was not easy to start the activity, partly because from under the rubble we were unable to recover any of the equipment from the workshop we had built at home. We decided to use what little savings we had left to buy two second-hand machines to use here at the camp.
"Fortunately, we also received help from Trócaire through the Caritas network, which stepped in with a custom design. We were then able to start this new workshop that allows us to give people work. There are currently twenty people involved. Some of the people who are here I didn't know before, but knowing that we were doing the same trade we involved them in this activity so that others would also have a chance to earn bread for their family."
Habibe now dreams of rebuilding her life and having a place she can call home.
“As we did before the earthquake, we want to continue in the future: this is our life, this is our profession, what we know how to do. Even before, we used to source fabrics from other cities, sew them and make clothes, which we then sold. We are working even now, and with my husband we already agree that if we have our own house again tomorrow, surely a floor will be set aside to become our new sewing workshop, to also offer work to others and bring home the bread.”
Life at the camp remains difficult and Habibe and her husband have become advocates for the needs of the community, helping aid workers more easily discern people's needs.
"We met Caritas by chance, when they came to visit us and distribute some water and food parcels for families. We told them that in the other neighborhood, outside the formal camp, there were other families in need, people who had lost their children, their wives and husbands, and were even more in need of help, but they lived far from the main roads and therefore were not visible and easily reached by humanitarian organisations. In this way, I also became a kind of a spokesperson for the rest of the community that populates the village."
“We told the Caritas workers about our story and the work that people do here: we explained our idea and asked for support, which materialised in this project, making our dream come true.”