Heal Uyghur Orphans’ Psychological Trauma

 Heal Uyghur Orphans’ Psychological Trauma: Give Charity for Mental Health Support

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Call To Action: 
With your support, we hope to heal and empower 100 young Uyghur refugee orphans in Istanbul struggling with severe mental health challenges by sponsoring their much-needed sessions of psychotherapy and trauma support. 

Join us in raising $50k to support 100 Uyghur orphans by donate and sharing with family and friends now! --> Share This Page 


Why do we need your support?

The ongoing Uyghur Genocide  has caused the plight of thousands of Uyghur refugee children to become extremely vulnerable in the diaspora. Engineered to become orphans, these young Uyghurs are completely cut off from both the financial and psychological support of their families as they struggle academically, financially, and spiritually to find their place in their world. 

 The Uyghur diaspora community in Turkey - one of the largest Uyghur communities outside East Turkestan – has become the host to hundreds of Uyghur orphans with severe mental health struggles. Isolated, traumatized, and alone, many of these children and teenagers, mostly aged 8-15 years old, have been suffering from depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress, and many other disorders, all without any mental health support.


Overview of Our Deliverables
1) organize a mental health awareness summit in autumn of 2021 in Istanbul by bringing mental health professionals, Uyghur youth leaders, and the target audience of Uyghur orphan refugee youths, to raise awareness amongst them and equip them with fundamental techniques to improve their wellbeing, 

2) overcome cultural barriers and mistrust which often hinder children from reaching out for support by: a) undertaking an intense search effort to contact mental health professionals who are already well-versed with the challenges of the backdrop of the Uyghur genocide and, b) generating a systematic informative protocol to educate psychologists who are not intimately familiar with elements of the Uyghur crisis

3) provide financial support to pay for the orphans' costs of mental health care, such as therapy sessions, trauma counseling, and/or medications. It is this third arm of our objectives that requires your generous support!

 

Who will you be supporting?

Your generous donations will be used to aid 100 Uyghur refugee children and teenagers to get mental health support. The Uyghur Genocide has now left many children in Turkey stranded and orphaned. With most of the children having not heard from their parents in years, they undergo severe psychological pressure as they imagine their whereabouts, most likely imprisoned inside a prison, concentration camp, or forced labor camp, or even already martyred under the current oppression. Children and teenagers, mostly aged between 8 and 15 years old, are growing up without familial support in a foreign country with the burden of not knowing if they will ever see their parents alive again. 



How can you help?

Your generous donations will be fully used to support the 3rd objective mentioned above, namely, to pay for the costs of much-needed mental health services for these Uyghur youths, such as therapy sessions, trauma counseling, and/or medications.

A low-estimated cost of a 3-months standard treatment of weekly psychotherapy sessions for one individual is about 3,600 Turkish lira (equivalent to $438, £315, €362). 

Therefore, we estimated a need to raise $50,000 to sponsor around 100 Uyghur youths for 3 months of mental health therapy. Of course, the funds will be flexibly allocated in a need-based manner where some children may require longer therapy and others shorter. 

As mentioned above, we will be responsible for personally planning, organizing, and delivering the mental health awareness summit happening later this year, which will act as the stimulus to engage the Uyghur community in Istanbul, serving as our entry point to introduce the youths to the various mental health services we carefully selected and procured in preparation for the summit. During and following this summit, we will begin to allocate the funds you helped raise to support each individual youth’s mental health need. 

In addition to donating here on GoFundMe, an alternative method for donations is also available via Paypal --> Donate with Paypal   

To stay updated on the different stages of the project, please sign up for the newsletter mailing via email (info at atlasnow.org) with the subject title: "Subscribe to GoFundMe Campaign Newsletter"



Who are the organizers?

We are a team of Uyghur young professionals based in Europe and Turkey, who came together to empower the diaspora community of Uyghur refugees. In this project, we are partnering with Uyghur community organizers on the ground in Istanbul who are intimately aware of the plight of individual Uyghur orphans in dire need of mental health support. 

For the purposes of full transparency, your contributions will be personally organized and allocated by the two leading organizers, Zeynep Aydin and Zulkayda Mamat. This process will begin with when they go to Istanbul for the mental health healing and youth empowerment summit in July-August (pandemic travel restrictions permitted). Zeynep and Zulkayda have partnered to co-found the Uyghur Mentorship Program in 2020 to connect Uyghur youths with Uyghur professionals one-to-one around the world. 

For more details on the leading organizers: 
Zeynep Aydin is an Uyghur activist based in Germany with a professional background in molecular biology. She is actively involved in community support of the Uyghur diaspora and worked on several projects such as the Atlas Media  training and started activism campaigns like the Google Uyghur  Sticker Campaign. Furthermore, she was involved in the #forcedlabourfashion  campaign to raise awareness about the forced labour camps in East Turkestan and the complicit involvement of the fashion industry in this crime against humanity. 

Zulkayda Mamat is an Uyghur graduate student based in the U.K. with an academic background in cognitive neuroscience and biological engineering. She is a co-founder of the U.S.-based non-profit, Uyghur Youth Organization, to empower Uyghur youths through education and recreational activities. In addition, she also helped in the creation of Iqra Fellowship , an educational initiative to foster a scholarly Muslim community in Boston. In relations to the Uyghur plight, she spoke at a couple of talks and personally organized and hosted the MIT Harvard Conference on the Uyghur Human Rights Crisis .