The Istanbul-Gambia line

I was quite surprised to see a bowl of rice sitting in the middle of the table when I went to have lunch with Ä°brahim Betil, a former banker who has been working in a nongovernmental organization for a long time.

Of course, the meal we were to have with Betil and other journalist colleagues was not only composed of flaky rice.

Soon enough we understood what the rice bowl symbolized.

It was a symbol of the hunger in Africa, especially in Gambia where Betil had been going for three years for various projects.

“In Gambia people are satiated with just a few spoons of rice a day. I have traveled to many places in Turkey and in the world. I have never seen such hunger,” Betil said.

So how did Betil end up in Gambia?

After having left banking, one of the founders of the Turkish Education Volunteers Foundation, Betil is now funding the Community Volunteers Foundation with over 50,000 university students as volunteers.
Having presided over the foundation that has managed to reach 350,000 students in 123 universities, Betil learned what the foundation was working on through the Internet and met two Gambians who traveled to Istanbul.

“I didn’t know where Gambia was on the map until that day. Two Gambians who were members of an NGO found a fund from the World Bank. They had come to get advice on how to manage that money.” he said.

Eventually, Betil traveled to Gambia with his assets and experience to explain what can be done in Africa.

Gambia ranks 168th in poverty among 185 countries.

As a former banker, he knows how to efficiently use the resources he possesses and in his first visit, Betil visited some of the villages and determined the needs of people.

In...