Since 2019, All Hallows Parish and Fr. Hual have been working with Fr. Hual’s friend, Dr. Hakan Gülerce, director of the Migration Policy Application and Research Center at Harran University, to provide aid to Syrian refugees in the city of Şanlıurfa, a city of 2 million residents that has taken in some 500 thousand Syrian refugees since the outbreak of the war in 2011.
This work takes a variety of forms. Our flagship program is called Knitting for Hope, which empowers refugee widows to achieve economic independence by knitting amigarumi products, which are then sold on the international market as a means of favorably leveraging currency exchange rates. These efforts help the women to be able to determine their own futures and to care for their children as they see fit, and it enables them to have a group to which they belong. All sales proceeds go to the women, and they in turn run the organization democratically.
Beyond Knitting for Hope, our work takes place through teams of trained volunteers coming alongside Syrian families in need, in order to walk with them and to help identify ways in which our working together can help to raise them up. This is a means of empowering families to chart their own courses in terms of what they most need to achieve economic independence and social cohesion in Turkiye. We like to say that we are changing the world, one living room at a time!
Fr. Hual and the people of All Hallows have been helping to facilitate this incredible work through fundraising efforts in the USA. Proceeds are received by All Hallows and managed by our independent accountants for disbursement to UYUM, our nonprofit organization registered in Türkiye.
With a national inflation rate of nearly 90 percent, a local poverty rate of 60 percent and an unemployment rate of 40 percent, things are exceedingly difficult for the Syrian population trying to survive in Şanlıurfa. Add that Şanlıurfa was one of the hardest hit cities in the earthquake zone, and we are seeing suffering on a tremendous scale among the refugee population there. Our efforts have shifted to provide earthquake relief for the Syrian population because the government has not extended the benefits to them that Turkish citizens are receiving.
Also since the earthquake, our efforts have expanded to include all refugees, because many earthquake survivors are now internally displaced. This has allowed us to use our years of experience gained from helping Syrian refugees in order to be on the frontlines in assisting the refugees of the Karamanmaras Earthquake, which killed more than 50 thousand people.
Underlying all of these relief efforts is a firm friendship and partnership between Dr. Gulerce, a faithful Muslim and Fr. Hual, a faithful Christian, which has become a witness of interfaith cooperation in an area of the world that sees very little of such love or cooperation.
Fr. Jeff and Kerry Hual are now recognized as Episcopal Volunteers in Mission of The Episcopal Church, assigned to our ongoing mission in southeastern Turkiye. Fr. Hual travels there three times a year to check on the mission. Each year in September he takes a pilgrimage group with him.
For more information, please contact the Rev’d Jeff Hual at rector@allhallowsparish.org.
