Hello! My name is Süleyman, and I’m from Turkey. I’m a volunteer at Turkish Red Crescent Kayseri. The pandemic, which continues to affect the world, was seen in our country late compared to other countries and this was an excellent opportunity to take precautions before it begins. Both the government and the communities, such as the Red Crescent, made awareness activities for our citizens. In addition, due to the fact that we are in the month of Ramadan, we continue to distribute bread and meals to our citizens who are unable to leave the house because of the virus. On May 3, we received a message from our corporate Instagram account while delivering food to our citizens.

The message said “Hello, good luck first. I’m asking for a favor from you. We are 112 medical staff (emergency). Unfortunately, today we can not provide food because all places are closed and we ask you to meal for 3 people. I tried to talk with other people but nobody reply me back, Can you help?” As soon as we saw the message, we contacted her and we were able to provide meal to them. It is nice for us but it is a normal situation because we do it all the time. But her thank-you message affected us very deeply. as a team, we all said: “it was worth it”.The messaged said: “Good evening, I’m sorry to bother you so much today, but if I didn’t thank you, I wouldn’t be happy. I actually want to write a lot of things here. Allah blesses all your friends who have contributed to helping people without distinguishing them on such a good day. The important thing is to help, to share. More or less, it doesn’t matter. I would like to thank all your volunteers, especially you. I want to say again that I am grateful to you for being with our paramedics in these difficult times and difficult conditions.” What we remembered at the end of the day was not our tiredness but this message, and it was the best feeling for the day.

Süleyman Yön
Turkish Red Crescent
May 12, 2020