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They are three friends: Onur Aydın, Emre Özgür and Anıl Erdem.
They all graduated from Bogazici University, one of the most prestigious universities in Turkey, and continued to study abroad.
But they all had the purpose to help thousands of students who do not have
the same education opportunities and have to study under difficult circumstances.
Having seen the various aid campaigns in internet and social media,
they decided to form a platform to get the schools in need together with the donors.
That's how they established the birsilgibirkalem.org platform, meaning one rubber one pencil, in January, 2012.
- Pelin Abla, we received the projector that you sent us via birsilgibirkalem.org.
Every Wednesday, our teacher is now showing us a new movie.
Each week we are learning something new. Thank you very much for considering us. 11 00:00:56,517 --> 00:01:00,788 Zeynep, Büyük Damlacık Elementary School, Ankara.
You can also make the students happy all over Turkey by sending them a present via birsilgibirkalem.org.
The platform has a very simple system.
Schools from all regions of Turkey, as well as donors login to the website and create a profile.
The teachers make a list of the needed items on the website.
Donors choose among the list, make the necessary purchase and send the items to the school.
After receiving the donation, the students send back a thank you letter together with a picture.
- I am very happy, thank you birsilgibirkalem!
The website was launched in January, 2012.
In our third week, we received a need from a school.
They were asking for a photocopy machine and the way they explained their situation was really touching.
Seeing such a demand at the very beginning of the project deeply affected us and we felt confident that we were doing the right thing.
A teacher from Muş, an eastern city of Turkey, wrote the following:
"Whenever I want to give a handout to my students or prepare an exam, I have to go to the city center,
which is 80 km away from school, to get the papers photocopied.
That's why I need a photocopy machine."
After such an influential explanation, this need was satisfied quickly by the donors.
- Thank you birsilgibirkalem!
Actually we were expecting to receive donation requests of expensive items,
such as projectors, computers and so on.
But rather, schools were mainly asking
for storybooks and photocopy papers.
Books, papers, rubbers and pencils are among the most requested items on the website.
It has been a year since the project started.
We now have nearly 3.500 registered donors and 1.000 schools.
More than 800 schools submitted their needs and 450 of them were satisfied.
There are approximately 400 needs waiting to be fulfilled on the website.
Emre Özgür, Onur Aydın and Anıl Erdem started this journey with one rubber and one pencil.
They encouraged the donors to give thousands of students a chance
to have access to equal education.
Reaching more than 800 schools, they put a smile on the students' faces
and made a big difference in their present and future.