Community Corner
Ship On Its Way to Turkey With Local Donations for Refugees
The donations will help families in a refugee camp.
Submitted by Jeff Carr
More than 18,000 blankets donated from the Herndon and nearby county areas recently are now on a ship bound for Turkey, to be delivered to Syrian refugees.
The blankets, collected through local agencies like the Fairfax County Interfaith Council and Cornerstones (formerly Reston Interfaith), will be taken to families in the Adana refugee camp.
Residents were asked to drop off clean and folded blankets at locations throughout Northern Virginia. In Fairfax County, seven meetinghouses of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS) served as donation collection points, as well as two Islamic Centers, and the offices of several members of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors.
Chairman Sharon Bulova joined volunteers at one LDS meetinghouse and publicly thanked the church for its hard work supporting the effort.
"From mountains of blankets in Board offices to faith groups who packaged thousands upon thousands of blankets, the Fairfax County and Northern Virginia communities truly rallied to support this great cause,” Bulova said.
Paxton Van lines collected the blankets and delivered them to the port of Virginia/Norfolk in early December, where they were loaded onto four 40-foot containers to be shipped to Turkey.
Maersk line, a large shipping company, donated the shipping and containers for the blankets without charge.
Mahmut Yeter, executive director of the Mid-Atlantic Federation of Turkic American Associations, said "The result was just absolutely amazing. People from all over Northern Virginia contributed to this cause."
More than 18,000 blankets donated from the Herndon and nearby county areas recently are now on a ship bound for Turkey, to be delivered to Syrian refugees.
The blankets, collected through local agencies like the Fairfax County Interfaith Council and Cornerstones (formerly Reston Interfaith), will be taken to families in the Adana refugee camp.
Residents were asked to drop off clean and folded blankets at locations throughout Northern Virginia. In Fairfax County, seven meetinghouses of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS) served as donation collection points, as well as two Islamic Centers, and the offices of several members of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors.
Chairman Sharon Bulova joined volunteers at one LDS meetinghouse and publicly thanked the church for its hard work supporting the effort.
"From mountains of blankets in Board offices to faith groups who packaged thousands upon thousands of blankets, the Fairfax County and Northern Virginia communities truly rallied to support this great cause,” Bulova said.
Paxton Van lines collected the blankets and delivered them to the port of Virginia/Norfolk in early December, where they were loaded onto four 40-foot containers to be shipped to Turkey.
Maersk line, a large shipping company, donated the shipping and containers for the blankets without charge.
Mahmut Yeter, executive director of the Mid-Atlantic Federation of Turkic American Associations, said "The result was just absolutely amazing. People from all over Northern Virginia contributed to this cause."
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