A small initiative for a big hope
29 February 2012
29.02.2012 - The project "Collect the caps one by one and overcome obstacles step by step," which started at the Faculty of Dentistry at Ege University in Izmir, Turkey, has also become a hope for war veterans in Kosovo. This project began about a year and a half ago with a single blue plastic bottle cap (for water), and so far around 250 million such caps have been collected, from the recycling of which sufficient funds have been secured to buy about 1100 wheelchairs for people with disabilities. The project simultaneously protects the environment and is supported by both ordinary residents and environmentalists.
The Dean of the Faculty of Dentistry at Ege University, Professor Doctor Xhelal, in an interview with the Anadolu News Agency Azhans, stated that the project, known to the public as "blue caps," continues rapidly, spreading across all four corners of Turkey and to 44 other countries around the world. Mr. Artunç says that the project has crossed Turkey's borders and that the caps collected in many countries such as Kosovo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Albania have been brought to Turkey for recycling.
The ideator and initiator of this project, Kushtrim Ahmeti, who is a student of the dentistry department at Ege University, is from Gjilan, Kosovo. Ahmeti informs that he shared the implementation of this project in Turkey with his fellow countrymen when he went on vacation to Kosovo, and for a short time, people began collecting blue caps even in Kosovo. Kushtrim Ahmeti states that after Kosovo, the project received wide support also in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Albania.
"In the Balkans, an exceptionally large number of covers are collected. The last time I went to Kosovo, the warehouses were filled with caps. With the support of the Turkish Ambassador to Pristina, Songyl Ozan, the covers collected in Kosovo will be brought to Turkey, and the wheelchairs that will benefit from recycling these covers will be distributed in April to war veterans in Kosovo as well as to people with disabilities in this country. Our goal is to initially secure 100 wheelchairs and then increase this number to 200. There is a strong need for wheelchairs in Kosovo. As a result of the war in Kosovo, many people have been left with disabilities and cannot walk due to the lack of such a wheelchair. These wheelchairs will be a gift for the veterans of the Kosovo war. "This has moved me deeply," says the Kosovar student, Kushtrim Ahmeti. Meanwhile, Mr
. Ahmeti also provides information about the project and states that 250 kg of plastic caps are equivalent to 1 wheelchair. For 250 kg of caps, 15,000 blue caps need to be collected. Ahmeti says that to further promote this project, they have made announcements on the internet through social networks, while for the posters and boxes where the caps are collected, the students participating in this project have used their own money.
Collecting plastic caps is easy since you can put them in your pocket and after gathering them in a small bag, you can take them to collection points, which are numerous in Turkey. In all schools, government institutions, or on the streets, large plastic boxes or bins have been placed where citizens deposit their caps from daily consumption, or from bottles they find on the streets or in other places. Something so small that may seem meaningless to one person has great significance for another. And precisely here, the saying 'Unity is strength' takes on meaning.
Meanwhile, the Dean of the Faculty of Dentistry at Aegean University, Professor Doctor Xhelal Artunç, said: We are extremely pleased with the scale of this campaign, which has spread rapidly and has surpassed the borders of Turkey. Certainly, this campaign should not be seen as a wheelchair campaign, but as a social responsibility, a need for unity, for the revival of the sense of solidarity to support each other. Meanwhile, providing a wheelchair from one lid and then providing a thousand more wheelchairs also demonstrates the great dimension of the work.