The Netherlands Red Cross has initiated a number of activities to start building up relations with ethnic cultural communities in the Netherlands. On this page you will find a short description of two of these activities.
Informing the Turkish-Dutch population
The Netherlands Red Cross is widely known for its international disaster relief programs, as part of the International Red Crescent Societies. However, awarenes is low of the domestic work in the Netherlands for those who are seriously ill, disabled or lonely. Awareness is not only low among Asian, African or South American citizens, but also amongst the wider public in the Netherlands.
The Netherlands Red Cross has initiated short holiday trips for both disabled and senior citizens from Turkish and Moroccan backgrounds. For one of those trips, TransCity has invited the Turkish media in the Netherlands to cover it. As a result, publications were achieved in both Benelux and western European editions of dailies like Hürriyet, Türkiye and Milliyet, as well as in many monthly Turkish-Dutch magazines. The trip was also covered by MTNL Television and local Turkish-Dutch television.
As a follow up, an interview was arranged with a member of the board of the Netherlands Red Cross, well-known ex-politician Paul Rosenmöller. The interview was presented as an exclusive interview for the Turkish-Dutch press in the Netherlands and again had a wide media coverage, from the Benelux and western European editions of the Turkish dailies, to the monthly magazines.
Morcoccan Earthquake
Late 2004, a heavy earthquake took place in Morocco. TransCity assisted the Netherlands Red Cross in cooperating with the Moroccan-Dutch community, has produced radio commercials for both cross cultural and mainstream national radio and assisted in fundraising publications in the local Moroccan-Dutch media.
Now listen to one of the radio commercials
Research
TransCity has set up qualitative research on the character of voluntary work within the Turkish, Moroccan, Surinamese and Antillean communities in the Netherlands. An important objective was to discover if and how a possible cooperation with the Netherlands Red Cross could be of mutual benefit of both these communities and the Netherlands Red Cross. The research was held amongst the Turkish community in Deventer, the Moroccan community in Eindhoven, the Surinamese community in Almere and the Antillean community in Groningen.