Dr. Kerem Kınık, president of Türkiye’s top charity Turkish Red Crescent (Kızılay), gave a presentation of the organization’s 2022 activities at an annual news conference on Tuesday. At the charity’s offices in Istanbul, Kınık told reporters that they reached out to 43.5 million people thanks to the assistance of donors and pledged to reach out more next year.
The charity marked its 154th anniversary this year and remains among Türkiye’s more prominent charity “exports” with its work across the world, from far corners of Türkiye to conflict zones and refugee camps.
Kınık said they helped more than 32.5 million people in Türkiye and nearly 11 million people in other countries in several campaigns, from health assistance to education as well as blood donations, something the charity is more well known for in Türkiye. The charity also supplied cash aid to the needy. The president said they used funds amounting to TL 11.5 billion ($610,000) and the assistance of some 254,000 people, including 239,128 volunteers.
He said they were the only association in the world reaching out to the highest number of people in the highest number of countries among 192 Red Cross and Red Crescent associations across the world. He pointed out that its income-generating work to fund humanitarian aid operations and financial sustainability also made it the “biggest such national society in the world.”
“We ran multi-dimensional campaigns. In terms of humanitarian assistance, we provided aid to 30 million people and reached out to 2.5 million people affected by disasters. We also helped 3 million displaced people, in their destinations and along the way. We also helped Turkish state agencies with our crews, particularly through our search and rescue crews,” he said.
The Turkish Red Crescent will focus on “Innovation and Sustainability” in 2023, Kınık said. “Innovation here means realizing new ideas in improving our operations. With sustainability, we aim to work on efficient use of existing resources,” he said, noting that they would improve their disaster assistance department for work on addressing the issues related to climate change. He said their disaster tracking system would be boosted with work for “prevention and projection” of disasters, adding that they would also tap artificial intelligence for their disaster management system.
The charity will open 10 new soup kitchens and will reach a capacity of serving 212,000 meals daily, apart from mobile kitchens which will bring this number to 680,000 meals daily.
