The Inner Child Platform
Although negative examples are becoming more visible each day, the presence of people who take a stand for good raises our hopes for humanity.
“We should always think of the rainbow. The existence of many colors together is what makes the rainbow lovely. If it only comprised blue and green, we would not name it the rainbow, nor would we be mesmerized by its beauty. Our differences make us more beautiful.“
These words belong to Ahmed Faruk Subaşı, who founded the platform The Inner Child. His story begins in the 2010s.
The Inner Child Platform
“At that time we gathered up as friends and drafted a set of rules before starting off. Our redlines involved absolutely no politics or ideology. No congregations. All we are after are good deeds, regardless of religion, language, race, or belonging. We will always support each other, or anyone with the same intentions for that matter. We have nothing to do with those support terrorism and try to make it sound benign. Those are the only exception. Others are always welcomed here.”
This unifying approach is kept at the heart of the project and turned the center into a nexus. The adventure began with five people in the year 2010 and has continued to grow rapidly. The first three years after the foundation, the team was able to reach and help those in need within Turkey. It was in 2013 when they held their first overseas event, for Eid al-Adha. Subaşı talks about the event:
“We thought: “A flower blossoming alone cannot herald spring, but every spring starts with a flower.” So we held our first overseas event in Arakan. Two years after the event, thankfully we were able to build a masjid there.”
Uganda was the team’s second and most important project abroad. We witnessed how little things made the people of Uganda happy.
“When I saw how a 10-cent notebook, that was to be thrown away, made a child happy it became clear to me that us bringing help was extremely important to them.”
The association was first established on October 12, 2017, Subaşı talks about the foundation process:
“At first we held events that didn’t require any money such as collecting clothing for children. We didn’t consider establishing a registered charity foundation until 2017, approximately for seven years. However, as we held bigger events and the demand grew through the years, we had to act as a legal entity to raise funds.”
A Memory in Uganda
After the association was established, the efforts in Uganda produced very good results. One of them was The Inner Child School in Uganda.
“There was a school in Uganda where we took gift wraps. The school’s facilities were so bad that even many of the stables here were better off than they were. When we wanted to buy it, the closure of that school was on the agenda. Ministry of education in Uganda marked the school’s conditions as ‘not available for education’. There were 27,000 schools in the country. 207 of them are referred to as Islamic schools. The school I mentioned ranked 207th out of 207 schools. So we took the school over thinking we’ll build this place again. Physical conditions were a disaster. The walls fell down when we tried plastering. Then we pulled down the whole building and rebuilt it. Afterward, we received a lot of teacher applications. There were even applications for trainee teachers the first time in the school’s 19-year history.”
Although this work looked like solely an educational activity, they opened up many other new opportunities.
“Children were in mortal danger because they didn’t have any money. So we made an agreement with a hospital to took our children there. Then we figured that the main two things that caused the children to fall ill were malnutrition and limited access to clean water. We built a new clear-water reservoir and this frequent occurrence of diseases came to an end. 5 students ranked top across the country for the first time in 19 years. The school’s rank raised to 9th place from the 207th among Islamic schools. While it used to be one of the worst schools across the country, it came among the top 3500. Children started to ask the question ‘why are we not in the first place?’ instead of ‘what am I going to eat today?’”
We mentioned here only a few of the team’s awesome accomplishments. Nowadays they are up for another event abroad for the Eid al-Adha. If you want to support them, you can call 0539 601 86 86, visit www.yardimhane.org
This article was originally written in Turkish. Shearch here to read it! : Büyüdüm Çocuk Oldum Platformu
