Children are freezing and hungry. Families are huddled in overcrowded emergency shelters thatare dangerously low on supplies and basic, life-sustaining necessities. In the aftermath of one of the most cataclysmic earthquakes in history, we are witnessing a humanitarian crisis of epic proportions in Turkey and Syria. Children, families, women, men, the elderly, the sick and disabled, and the able-bodied are faced with unimaginable suffering. With each passing day, this humanitarian crisis becomes more dire.

The numbers are staggering – tens of thousands left homeless, without food and water, and without warm clothing, medicine, and other supplies. Their homes and all of their belongings have been reduced to mountains of rubble. In regions that absorbed among the worst devastation, Franciscan Friars in Turkey and Syria are on the front lines answering the piercing cries for help by mothers desperate to keep their children warm and fed, and by the elderly in need of medication. In one small neighborhood of Aleppo, the city in Syria about 30 miles from the Turkish border, an unfathomable 4,000 people a day are turning to the Franciscan Friars for food and water and winter clothing. There are tens of thousands more like them throughout the earthquake-stricken regions of Turkey and Syria who the Franciscans are trying to help with food, water and other supplies. But like the emergency makeshift housing encampments that have been set up in malls and stadiums, resources are scarce.