Turkish Red Crescent to help 25M people in 2020

ISTANBUL

The Turkish Red Crescent has set the goal of helping 25 million people in 2020, the charity's head said Wednesday.

This year the charity helped 22.3 million people worldwide, Kerem Kinik said at their annual meeting in Istanbul.

Kinik said 7 million of the people they reached out to in 2019 were foreigners and the majority of the aid provided revolved around social services, and aid program and projects.

He added that his organization also trained people in responding to natural disasters and more than 800,000 citizens received safety education.

Kinik noted that the charity tended to 5 million wounded refugees in Turkey, adding that aid worth 296 million Turkish Liras ($50 million) was distributed within the country.

"In addition to this, humanitarian aid worth a billion dollars was sent to northern Syria," he said, adding this would correspond to some 48,000 truckloads of essential items.

Furthermore, Turkish Red Crescent collected 2.8 million bags of blood and 260,000 stem cells from donors this year.

He said he was proud to announce that Turkish Red Crescent was one of the most efficient aid organizations worldwide with a budget of 5.6 billion Turkish liras ($942 million), of which 4.8 billion ($808 million) liras are allocated for humanitarian activities.

Kinik said a modular shelter factory would be opened on Nov. 1, 2020 -- the largest of its kind.

Also, he said, soup kitchens will be increased to 22 in 2020 to feed a total of 40,000 people.

The humanitarian group's head said they were considering to send a delegation to Libya, which is in dire need of humanitarian assistance as it was dragged into chaos following the Arab Spring protests in the Middle East.

* Writing by Ali Murat Alhas