When Meltem Elmaci thinks back to the earthquakes that hit Turkey and Syria in February this year, one memory stands out. As she and her fellow Turkish Red Crescent volunteers handed out donated gift boxes to child survivors, they asked each child to describe their dream toy. One little girl, Ayşe, described the doll she wanted, using a stick to draw a picture of it on the ground. Opening the gift box, she saw a doll exactly as she’d imagined it – “from the colour of the skirt to the jewellery on her arm”, says Elmaci. No one could explain it, but the incident affected them deeply. “It made us all very happy to realise the dream of a child,” she says.
Moments such as these are cherished by volunteers when they find themselves surrounded by the destruction and misery caused by an earthquake. Now head of the Ankara branch, a voluntary role she carries out in addition to her job as a teacher, Elmaci has been involved with the Turkish Red Crescent almost all her life. As a child, she was a member of her primary school’s branch, collecting books and toys for children who needed them, but it was the sight of the Turkish Red Crescent vests at the 1999 Marmara earthquake that led to her joining as a volunteer. Her role now involves being ready, when disaster hits, to organise a volunteer response, bringing food, water, clothes, bedding, schooling and psychosocial support to those affected. “Wherever there is a need, we are there,” she says.
