Digital activists help earthquake survivors in Turkey and Syria find shelter

Five digital activists have created a website that helps provide shelter to survivors of the earthquake that hit Syria and Turkey and left millions homeless in freezing winter temperatures.

Just 48 hours after the earthquake reduced cities to rubble, Avi Schiffmann built TakeShelter, a website that connects homeless people with hosts around the world offering their homes as shelter.

“Tens of thousands are currently freezing in the winter cold without shelter,” 20-year-old Schiffmann told the CNN . “TakeShelter puts the power back in the hands of those displaced by the earthquake, allowing them to find shelter now rather than waiting in the cold or in overcrowded relief centers.”

Around 50,000 people were killed in the February 6 earthquake, and more than 5 million people in Syria alone may need assistance in shelters, according to the United Nations Refugee Agency.

Schiffmann worked with four other software engineers — 19-year-old Krish Shah, Adrian Gri and Will Depue, and 21-year-old Anant Sinha — to launch TakeShelter. The site was launched by InternetActivism, a non-profit organization they founded to develop digital humanitarian tools, such as websites and apps, “to help those affected by injustice, disaster and displacement.”

“Our generation often feels caught between desperately wanting to help and feeling like there’s nothing we can do,” Depue told CNN . “I hope InternetActivism shows people how we are all capable of creating real change in the world. It just requires you to think a little differently. I am so excited that we are seeing real people find the shelter they need on our platform.”

People who want to open their homes to displaced earthquake survivors can sign up to TakeShelter.org and post a public listing. Displaced earthquake survivors, meanwhile, can search the site for nearby host families.

In addition to advertising on social media, volunteers are on site finding displaced people and connecting them directly with hosts through the website. Other Turkish groups, activists and influencers are also promoting TakeShelter through social media and word of mouth, Schiffmann said.

More than 100 families displaced by the earthquake have already found shelter through the site, which has been translated into English, Turkish and Arabic, according to Schiffmann.

“We took great care to design the site to be intuitive, because we understand that our users are often stressed, in a new location and in a hurry,” said Schiffmann, who a year ago created Ukraine Take Shelter after the Russian crisis invaded its neighbor . That site connected 100,000 Ukrainian refugees with hosts around the world, according to Schiffmann.

Survivors seek shelter under trees; the luckiest get a tent

Images of the destruction wrought by the earthquake in Syria and Turkey are etched in Mouaz Moustafa’s mind.

The Syrian-American relief worker saw corpses, children living under trees, bereaved families struggling to stay alive in freezing temperatures and streets crowded with survivors, now homeless with nowhere to go.

“Millions are still on the streets and will die in the cold if they don’t have shelter,” he said. “The lucky ones have a tent, even if it’s a terrible tent. If they even have a tarp, they’re lucky.”

Moustafa launched the Syria Emergency Task Force (SETF) in 2011 to help Syrians displaced by the civil war find housing, education and medicine. Now the group has partnered with InternetActivism to start TakeShelter, connecting homeless earthquake survivors with hosts through the site.

“The partnership means we can help shelter Syrians who have been devastated by 12 years of war crimes and now the worst natural disaster in Syrian and Turkish history,” Moustafa said. “Avi and InternetActivism’s work with SETF can help us take advantage of technology to help people the world has left to its own devices.”

When combining a digital platform where anyone can sign up and a crisis involving compromised people in desperate situations, there is always a security risk.

International organizations such as the UN Refugee Agency have warned that refugees and other forcibly displaced people are “an easy target for traffickers, who take advantage of their precarious situation to exploit them”.

To mitigate the risk and maintain the security of the site and the displaced people who use it, hosts undergo mandatory identity checks by taking a live photo of their government ID, which moderators verify with a live photo of their face.

TakeShelter includes prompts on each listing to guide refugees on how to safely search for a host on social media, alert family and friends about who they are staying with, and how to recognize potential red flags. The website also provides local emergency numbers as well as the UN Refugee Agency hotline for immediate help.

“Avi and InternetActivism have a strong security record and we at SETF are ensuring that anyone wanting to host presents the necessary documents,” said Moustafa. “Our teams on the ground are available to ensure follow-up if there are any issues.”

A team of moderators regularly review each listing and report malicious users to local authorities. Site users can also report listings.

“Many will not survive another day”

As a Jewish person whose grandmother survived the Holocaust thanks to a family that secretly sheltered her, Schiffmann understands the long-term impact of sheltering the vulnerable.

“When I see lives being saved through our work, I like to think that this allows future generations to survive,” he said. “When people have a safe haven, they can focus on fixing their lives, getting new jobs, settling in new places, enrolling their kids in school. I hope that TakeShelter will allow people to live full lives that they might not otherwise have.”

His quest to find ways to unite humanitarian aid with technology after disasters like the earthquake is what led him to meet the co-founders of InternetActivism on social media. All five took a break from their universities to develop the nonprofit, which they launched in 2022.

“Our hope is that our work serves as a model showing that anyone with a laptop and an Internet connection can create a huge positive impact for their community. All you have to do is think creatively,” said Sinha, software engineer at TakeShelter.

The group’s goal is to build a set of humanitarian tools – including TakeShelter – that are instantly ready when a crisis strikes, rather than building tools from scratch every time.

While many people have given up on news of the earthquake, the InternetActivism team says they will not slow down in efforts to get as many survivors off the streets as quickly as possible.

For those displaced by the earthquake, the first and most important step on their arduous journey to healing is simply staying alive. Without enough food, proper winter clothing, and safe shelter, each cold night they survive is considered a miracle.

Especially in Syria, where access to aid is severely limited and other political dangers threaten citizens’ daily lives, “security is a minimum requirement,” according to Moustafa.

“People in Syria are used to bombing, chemical weapons attacks, heavy artillery, ISIS, the list goes on about how vulnerable these displaced people are,” he said.

After witnessing repeated catastrophes in Syria, from air strikes on starving children and the psychological ramifications of tragedies, Moustafa dreams of a world where people stop forgetting their country.

“Not only did they survive the worst humanitarian disaster in their country’s history, they also suffered war crimes and were repeatedly condemned by the international community,” he said. “At the very least, we need to provide humanitarian aid to help them survive when many will not survive another day.”