Sociology Student Club, one of the student clubs of our university, supported the food distribution of Çorbada Tuzun Olsun Association, which serves homeless individuals in Taksim area, on December 7, 2023.
The association, which sees soup as a tool to reach homeless individuals living in extreme poverty, distributes food as a solution to the undernutrition problem of these individuals, while supporting homeless individuals to gain identity, get a job and access to the health system.
Our volunteer students, who supported the association’s food distribution to the homeless, received a half-hour orientation training after packing the meals and placing them in the bags. During the orientation training, the association and its work, volunteer activities, how the process will work, the macro and micro dimensions of homelessness were generally mentioned. Volunteers were informed that homelessness can be caused by individual reasons such as loss of assets, problems within the family, substance abuse, as well as social reasons such as housing prices and the country’s economic crisis.
After the orientation training provided by the association, Sociology Student Club members went to the field and interacted with homeless individuals and had the opportunity to examine the problem of homelessness in the field. Our students who participated in these volunteering activities contributed to the fight against many socioeconomic inequalities that homeless people are exposed to, such as poverty, food insecurity and neglected diseases, and to poverty alleviation efforts.