FC Barcelona and Race Car Driver Send Aid to Refugees in Kurdistan

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Spanish football titan FC Barcelona and Spanish-Kurdish racing driver Isaac Tutumlu are working with an Erbil-based aid organization to distribute clothes -- including Barcelona jerseys and racing shirts -- to thousands of refugees in the Kurdistan Region.

“The FC Barcelona Foundation and Barzani Charity Foundation, thanks to efforts of Isaac Tutumlu, have reached an agreement to donate clothing for hundreds of thousands of refugees coming to Kurdistan as a result of the conflict in the area,” said a press release from Tutumlu’s agency.

Tutumlu is a driver for the Barzani Racing Team in the International GT Open, a grand-tourer style sports car racing tournament.

Born in Barcelona to a Spanish mother and Kurdish father, Tutumlu has sought a way to relieve the humanitarian crisis in Kurdistan, which is now home to 1.4 million refugees from Syria and internally displaced persons (IDPs) from Iraq.

“It is terrible to see the refugees having to live in the difficult circumstances of war,” Tutumlu said. “We thought this was a good initiative and decided to contact the FC Barcelona Foundation to see if they could help us to make things slightly easier.”

He continued that the object of the cooperation would be to “donate clothing for men and women and, first and foremost, for children who are always the most disadvantaged in the war.”

The FC Barcelona Foundation has recently reversed a policy of sending its donations abroad itself, as there was a tendency for official gear from the popular club to disappear en route.  

Team Barzani shirts and FC Barcelona jerseys will be sent to the Kurdistan Regional Government representative in Spain, Daban Shadala, who will ensure the clothing makes it to Erbil.

The clothes will then be distributed by the Barzani Charity Foundation (BCF), a local NGO with a strong presence in most Syrian refugee and the more newly-established IDP camps.  The clothes come as the BCF and other charities are preparing residents for the onset of winter, meaning lower temperatures, rain, and mud.

Yet the clothes serve a secondary function -- one that may be even more important as the crisis drags on.

A BCF spokesperson told Rudaw that the longer people remain in camps, “the more they are in need of hope and encouragement. The clothes will show them that prominent Kurds abroad are paying attention, as is the most famous football club in the world. We predict this will make an enormous difference by lifting spirits in the camps.”