Seventy orphans coming to Turkey from 13 different countries for the IHH’s 5th International Meeting of Orphans appeared before cameras on Wednesday. Spending joyful times at the park, orphans saw the miniature replicas of many historic landmarks in Turkey at Miniatürk and enjoyed themselves.
The fact that the orphans coming from countries such as Albania, Azerbaijan, Indonesia-Aceh, Philippines-Moro, Palestine, Iraq, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Syria, Sri Lanka, Tanzania and Turkey mingled with each other and played together joyfully has shown one of the most beautiful fruits of the unity and solidarity-based global movement of benevolence.
“165 million orphans, all of them are your brothers, sisters,”
The orphans who were brought together in İstanbul by the IHH in a bid to raise public awareness about orphans, introduce Turkish culture to others and help different cultures develop relations, offered their thanks to the IHH, which continues to develop projects for them, to IHH’s donators, sponsor families and the Turkish people. The orphans, who played with each other and mingled with Turkish orphans, had a lot of photos taken before the cameras.
IHH’s sensitivity about orphans
IHH deputy President Hüseyin Oruç also appeared before the cameras with the orphans on Wednesday and gave some information about the Sponsor Family System and 5th International Meeting of Orphans.
He said there are 165 million orphans or children without a family in the world. Oruç noted that IHH’s basic principles in its orphan relief activities could be summarized with one sentence, “165 million orphans, all of them are your brothers and sisters.”
Oruç said IHH brings together orphans supported through the Sponsor Family Project from various parts of the world every year in Turkey. He said a sponsor family makes a monthly donation of TL90 (around 40 euros) for each of the orphans they care, adding that this money is used to meet living and education expenses of the orphans and prepare a better future for them.
Oruç added that the IHH is an institution which extends a helping hand to orphans in regions hit by wars, natural disasters or poverty and develops solution-based projects for them since the day of its establishment.
“IHH is making efforts to ensure that children, who will shape our future, grow up under good living conditions. It provides regular aid to 26,000 orphans across 36 countries in the world and 35 provinces in Turkey thanks to valuable support from its charity givers. IHH aims to support 100,000 orphans within five years. The number of orphan children, who are the flowers of the world, has unfortunately reached 200,000. More than two million children in Africa alone are orphaned every year. The number of orphan children in Iraq alone is five million. The number of children orphaned each day in the world is around 10,000. More than half of the orphans live in the streets where they face many threats and risks. Unfortunately, orphans are kidnapped every day in many parts of the world, they are abused by prostitution gangs, organ mafia, begging networks and missionary institutions. Every orphan who is taken care of means that we will have a brighter future. Prophet Muhammad was born as an orphan, he loved children very much. He gave important messages to humanity saying: “I and the custodian of an orphan are like this (together) in Paradise", and he joined his forefinger and middle finger together. As the IHH, we want every home to experience the happiness and peace of taking care of at least one orphan. Every orphan who is taken care of will raise our hopes about the future. They are the hopes of the world which is shaken by wars every day. They are our future. If we can hold from their hands, we will have a right to say,” Oruç said.
He also invited everyone to the 5th International Meeting of Orphans which will kick off at 3 pm at Haliç Congress Center in İstanbul on June 3.
