wp_disaster_relief()
This is a guest post by Barış Ünver. Barış is from Turkey, and wrote a HeroPress essay back in 2017. He approached me yesterday about using HeroPress to appeal to the greater WordPress community about helping the people of Turkey after the recent terrible earthquakes. The following is his story and his ask. Please help as you can.
I opened my eyes, yet it was the same darkness as when my eyes are closed. I shouted at my sister to stop rocking the bunk bed, yet I couldn’t hear myself over the immense rumble. I was trying to understand why I was chewing and spitting concrete when I heard my father from really far away–like, two meters–at the door of the bedroom of my sis and I. We quickly got to the living room where mom had us put on some shoes while dad was trying to open the entrance door–it was stuck, probably because of the five or six stories of the building on top of us compressing everything beneath (we were on the first floor, three or four meters above the ground). We found our way through the balcony in the back of the house, and jumped.
I was only eleven when the İzmit earthquake struck in 1999, which had a magnitude of 7.6 Mw. Then the Düzce earthquake happened a few months later, 7.2 Mw. About 120 kilometers and 87 days between the two quakes. I was lucky to survive both, and so was my family and all my relatives.
On February 6th, 2023, two earthquakes struck Turkey again… about 100 kilometers and only 9 hours in between. The first one in Gaizantep had a magnitude of 7.8 Mw. The second one in Kahramanmaraş shook us with 7.5 Mw. Ten cities in Turkey and more in Syria are affected, decimating some parts of the cities, and tens of thousands of deaths…
I’m far away from the disaster area, but agonizing. I can’t begin to describe the catastrophe we’re going through, and I’m not going to. I have to do something else, like, I don’t know, tell the people around the world. And you, WordPress, is the biggest worldwide community I’m proud to be in. I’m humbly asking for your help.
Under the tens of thousands of buildings collapsed, people are freezing to death in the cold of winter. Governments around the world are helping our government to get as many people as possible out of the debris, but that’s not the end of the story. Some cities are wiped off the map, and hundreds of thousands are now homeless. We need shelter and basic access to toilets, heaters and blankets, mobile water filtration systems, mobile kitchens… We need a lot right now, and even more in the future, to rebuild.
I know it’s not easy to send heaters from San Francisco, or a container house from Berlin, so the best way is to help financially. Our economy was already messed up (Think 8% inflation is bad? Try 80%!) but the very-hard-to-find silver lining of it is that your currency is most probably incredibly valuable in exchange to the Turkish Lira. One dollar is approximately 19 liras right now, and is able to buy four loaves of bread. A decent heater is around $20, and the cost of a container house is about $5K. Thus, even a donation of $50 (which is around the annual license of your favorite theme or plugin) is very meaningful, very valuable.
So, how can you donate? Ideally, the WordPress Foundation would set up their own donation campaign (so we can see how the WordPress community stand together) but we have existing options (none of which I’m affiliated with):
AFAD: The government agency dealing with disaster and emergency management. They accept donations in TRY, USD, EUR and GBP.
Ahbap: The name literally translates to “Buddy”, and it’s the largest non-government organization to help those in need regarding this disaster. They have bank accounts for TRY, USD, EUR, GBP, AUD, SR, JPY and they also accept donations via credit cards, bank cards and crypto wallets.
Turkish Red Crescent & British Red Cross: These most well-known blood donation agencies accept donations via credit card. The British Red Cross also accepts donations via PayPal and helps Syria as well as Turkey.
UNICEF: You can help children in Turkey and Syria with Visa, MasterCard, AmEx and PayPal.
News articles: I’ve found news articles in the New York Times and the Guardian, but there has to be more in your favorite news websites, and in your language.
Your government agencies: Definitely ask your own government agencies for more information about this earthquake, and how to help.
WordPress is a colossal ecosystem, and has one of the largest open-source communities in the world. It is changing and saving lives all around the world… and this is a chance to save thousands, tens of thousands more. I trust WordPress and I trust its capability to help Turkey survive this insane disaster.
Thank you so much for reading this. Please consider donating–even small amounts will grow together to make a big difference. And please consider sharing this post so more people can read about this disaster. Take care.
Featured image from EU Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid, License: CC BY-SA 2.0 No changes were made.
