On Monday 14th March our Sales and Marketing Director John Kirwin and two friends set off from Folkestone on their 2,200 mile trip to their destination of Rzeszow in Poland.
They hired a van down in Kent and linked up with Mary Daley, the Community Champion at Tesco in Ashford. Mary had been co-ordinating donations on behalf of Valia McDonagh representing the Ashford & Canterbury Ukraine Aid.
They loaded over £4,000 worth of goods including medical equipment, baby food and a range of medicines all donated by the good people of Kent. A fantastic effort.
Once they reached the border point the donated goods were taken onward and intended for distribution in the city of Kharkiv in Ukraine where they are vitally needed. The city has been particularly badly hit and is struggling, like so many other Ukrainian cities, to sustain the population that remain.
Returning back to the UK on Friday 18th March having shared the driving and having had no significant rest or sleep John said:
“We have been absolutely blown away by the organisation and the generosity of people who were literally flooding into Ashford with load after load. We are also blown away by people’s generosity with our fund raising which now stands at over £10K smashing our original target of £2500. This is going towards further aid trips so please continue your giving. This is a worsening humanitarian disaster and every penny counts”.
Donations made are initially going directly to contribute to fuel costs, tolls, the ferry and lorry hire etc. They anticipate this being about £2500 per trip and now that the amount raised has quadrupled a second van has already been funded and made the journey. Two more volunteer crews have come forward.
The Just giving target has been raised from £10K to £15K and anything over this amount will go directly to Ashford & Canterbury Ukraine Aid helping them to continue their life saving work and deploy the funds in the most effective way.
The appeal remains open and if you would like to support the charity and the aid missions you can donate directly to the Just Giving page set up by John, Pete and Clive:
We will bring you further updates as we have them.
With grateful thanks
John Pete & Clive
