Earthquake in Syria. COOPI provides first response to 400 families

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09-02-2023 | di COOPI

Earthquake in Syria. COOPI provides first response to 400 families

In these hours, 400 families in Aleppo are receiving the first assistance from COOPI - Cooperazione Internazionale, active in Syria's second largest city since 2018, with programmes to provide food security and psycho-social support to the most affected by the crisis.

Immediately after the earthquake of the 6 february that struck northern Syria, affecting most of all the Governorate of Aleppo, COOPI conducted the first needs assessment among the communities of Forwan, Salah Din and Mohafaza, thanks to its field team of 25 operators.

Food, clothes, blankets, hygiene kits, children's kits, medicines: these are the most urgent needs of those who survived the earthquake. Survivors have lost their homes or they cannot return to them, they have nothing left to take care of themselves and their children or to cope with the freezing winter temperatures.

While the families get temporary shelter at the facilities provided by the local authorities (the stadium, mosques and schools), COOPI has organized the first emergency distribution. Today 400 families are receiving:

  • A cash allocation to buy food directly in the local market;
  • solar lamps to compensate for the ongoing electricity shortage;
  • blankets and hygiene kits.

COOPI has drawn on its first emergency fund to meet immediate needs and organize new distributions, but more needs to be done. This is why it is launching a public fundraising appeal to support its humanitarian intervention capacities and thus help as many people as possible.

You can donate to COOPI with the causal "Earthquake emergency" in these ways:

According to data released by the Syrian Ministry of Health, yesterday 8 February, 4.5 million people were affected by the earthquake, 2,044,627 of them in the Governorate of Aleppo. Here, 52 buildings collapsed completely, in addition to an indefinite number of buildings damaged or about to collapse. In the city of Aleppo, which had a population of 1.8 million in 2018, COOPI estimates that around 100,000 people no longer have a viable home.

COOPI started working in Syria in 2016, focusing first on providing livelihoods to the families most affected by the crisis and living in the rural Damascus area. In 2018, it opened the psychosocial support programme in Aleppo, focusing on community centers. In this way COOPI was capable of reaching over 40,000 people over time, through specialized therapies and awareness campaigns on mental health, prevention of violence and abuse on women and children. To this in 2021, it added the food security programme, which through the support of horticulture, small-scale animal husbandry or the use of the cash-for-work or cash-transfer system has enabled thousands of families to survive.