Follow up update on Ukraine and our respose

Again, it seems an age since the last newsletter, it’s only been 4 days but so much has happened and its therefore time to report back.

Many of you, the more regular volunteers, may have received a communication from Chas the other day, for those of you who did there will be a certain amount of repetition here, apologies for that, however this newsletter will clearly be both better written and more interesting so go get yourselves a cup of tea and a biscuit or another drink and snack and settle yourselves down, this will be a long one!

Firstly, of course our thoughts are with everyone involved in this conflict, on both sides.  There are no real winners in war and whilst we of course rush to help all those refugees who are crossing the borders, there are many Russian mothers who also mourn the deaths of their sons.  They have been sent off to fight, many against their will, a senseless battle with their neighbours.  The loss of these lives are also a waste.   I was on the border on Saturday with a Russian guy who has spent years living in Ukraine who wants to seek asylum.  He says there is no way he is going back to fight the country who has hosted him and been so good to him for a long time.   Just a reminder that at Hope and Aid Direct we take aid not sides, although that of course can be very very hard at times like this. 

Many of us have been involved in the charity since the Balkans war and have seen conflict before, and then of course the EU migrant crisis, but nothing could have prepared us for the outpouring of help, both needed and offered, that we have received.  Our phones, inboxes, WhatsApp groups and all other forms of communications have gone totally mad.  We are all working at pace to keep up with everything so a quick apology.  If your email goes unanswered, the website is slightly out of date, your WhatsApp goes ignored we are sorry, we will get to you in due course, we are all just trying to prioritise, and those priorities revolve around how to get the right aid to the right people at the right time.   

In terms of these offers and requests, we have of course been tapping into our corporate contacts to get this right aid but if anyone believes they may have any corporate contacts that may be useful to us please let us know.   We have had communications from well-known brands wanting to support with call centre staff to food donations to toiletries.  Companies and logistics operators are offering us trucks and drivers and other companies are looking for our logistical help to move, for example, fire safety equipment into Ukraine.  In addition, we have been contacted by many individuals wanting to do anything they can to help, including drive for us, we thank you all.  It’s another job to deal with but we are slowly contacting everyone who has offered support to understand the offers of help in more detail.  One thing that we have been crying out for for years has now transpired, warehousing.   We have secured a large space for palleted goods in an empty Debenhams store in Basildon, Essex.  At a senior level within NatWest, other warehousing for HaAD and our Ukraine response is being sought for a longer-term need. Both Manston Airport (Kent) hanger space, and Southend airport hangar space is being readied at a government level, with logistics to match, but this is a developing situation.

In our last newsletter I mentioned a couple of the things that had been offered to us, well now it’s time to put some meat on the bones.  Please bear in mind though, we are in crisis response mode, things on the ground change by the hour, if not the minute, so if some of the things that I discuss here change or do not happen, plans will have changed for very good reasons.  There are extremely complicated logistics at play here.

We have paid a hugely reduced cost for 400 field-hospital beds.  They are due to be collected on Tuesday from Glasgow and will fill between five and six artics. The Ukraine Medical Association have arranged transport in two tranches, and they will be in Poland for onward delivery into Ukraine immediately thereafter. We are hoping to get these costs re-imbursed by a generous donor, fingers crossed for that one.

As we have mentioned many times, the transportation of aid is complex, you can’t just load a van and go, you need a registered receiving NGO in the country to invite you deal with the paperwork.  They in turn need to have the correct warehousing and facilities to receive the aid and move it on to those that need it, and importantly they need to have been asked for it by these people, you will see, there are a lot of moving parts.  I believe we have made a good new contact in Romania, a key transit route for refugees and with that in mind it is likely that our first truck of aid will be heading there shortly subject to the last bits of paperwork which are hopefully being sorted as I type this.  If this can go ahead, Dennis Little and Steve Walsh will be loading our big rig over the next couple of days and then departing immediately.  Speed for this departure is imperative, not only because the aid is required, but also the truck needs to be back in the UK ready to be loaded to join a convoy to Moldova.  The aid that goes to Romania will for the most part be warehoused and then moved on using local contacts to the cities of Chernivtsi and Ternopil in Ukraine, there are no plans for our trucks to enter Ukraine.

For the next trip, to Moldova, Hope and Aid Direct is linking up with TEECH who we know well, and we are both putting our trucks on the road with UK departure currently planned for 24th March. As things stand at present there will be Two HaAD artics, (thanks to an owner/driver volunteer) plus our two 7.5 tonners, joining the TEECH contingent of another artic, and an 18 tonner.  This much larger convoy requires of course much more planning and logistics, so we are still pulling all of this together right now. We are of course monitoring the situation on the ground carefully given past trouble in the Transnistria region so this convoy, and every convoy that we are likely to take during this conflict is open to last minute change should the circumstances dictate.  The safety of ourselves, our volunteers and the NGO’s that we work with are our priority.  Therefore, we need good contacts with registered NGOs in many countries, so a switch can be made if required. 

With that in mind, as we only have a couple of long-term relationships in these countries, I flew out to the region on Thursday to meet up with many people who we have been communicating with over the phone in the past week or so and as I write this, I am confident that we now have reliable NGO’s that we can work with in Moldova, Romania, and Slovakia.  We have taken a decision for now to work in these 3 countries and not Poland despite all the press about this country, the reasons for which I aim to explain in my summary of the past few days below. 

The first day was spent in Poland. I initially went down to Medyka, the main border connecting Lviv to Poland. It was busy but not chaotic, a steady stream of a few people here and there rather than mass transit, I understand the queues on the other side are very long, it is clearly taking a while to process people. There was a long queue of cars and trucks waiting to get into Ukraine (UA).

The border area was well organised, mainly by locals and small local NGO’s there was no sign of the major players in this area, for a variety of reasons they take longer to arrive. There are food and drink facilities at the border along with a fully stocked supermarket, medical aid and supplies and of course hundreds of black bin bags of clothes!!

This border is just for people arriving by foot. It is a very sad sight, it has been portrayed accurately on the news, many women arriving with small children and elderly relatives with a few carrier bags of their possessions, one woman arriving in flip flops, fine in August, not so great as the first flakes of snow start to fall onto an already miserable situation.

As is so often the case though scratch just a little deeper and you can find glimmers of hope.  I watched a mum, grandmother and 3 small kids walk down from passport control to where dad was waiting on the other side, as they all saw each other, arms went in the air and the kid’s forlorn faces lit up, they all ran into dads waiting arms for a big bear hug and lots of tears.  A small ray of light on an otherwise dark and dreary scene.  

People are being moved on quickly to Przemysl, pronounced ‘Shemesh’ I am led to believe, go which is where the trains arrive from Lviv, the trains take between 18 and 28 hours, by contrast it takes an hour to drive. This town is where people are registered. Once again there are hundreds of well-meaning black bags of clothes. Some is of course needed, most people I saw arriving even by train only had 1 bag of belongings so I am sure the people that take this stuff are very happy but there is too much, no more is needed.

Again, the big organisations are noticeable by their absence at the moment in Przemysl. I spoke to representatives of a couple of the major names, and they said that they are still in planning stages so maybe that is why.

Once registered people are then allowed to move on throughout Poland and are put on train to Krakow, Warsaw, Wroclaw, and other major Polish cites. That said they are in the Schengen areas so realistically have a 90-day visa to go wherever they so please.

The main upshot of this relatively organised chaos is that there is not a gap for us to fill currently in Poland. I believe there will be, supporting local and refugee communities in the medium to long term but unless we happen to find an organisation in Warsaw or Krakow that needs our immediate help, our efforts will be focused elsewhere for now.  So, onto Slovakia…

In certain respects, the borders are very similar, people arriving mostly on foot, the same tears, the same lack of belonging and hopelessness.  It was busier than the Polish border, more charities and volunteers on the ground here compared to Poland.  In other respects, it felt different and less hospitable.  It felt, as many of these places in the first days and weeks of humanitarian emergencies do, that NGOs were vying for space and encouraging ‘customers’ with large banners and placards. A lot of non-mainstream religious groups were present offering help in return for, I am not sure for what, but you certainly get the feeling that the bowl of soup is far from free! This is the darker side of the humanitarian aid effort but, this is only one person’s opinion.

Whilst not the greatest of starts it was about to get a whole lot better as my path crossed with Robby, an ex Croatian army member, an independent humanitarian aid worker and someone who Hope and Aid Direct have worked with closely over several years in Eastern Europe and Greece during the migrant crisis.  “Jump in, I have some aid to take over the border into Uzhhorad, we will nip over quickly and come back for coffee” he said… Crossing borders in Eastern Europe can be complicated and long-winded with loads of paperwork, crossing borders in times of war can be complicated and long-winded with loads of paperwork, put the two together and you have a bureaucratic nightmare.  It took roughly 6 hours to get across one way, but we were on a mission to take 3 van loads of water, food, nappies, and food containers that had been requested by a local contact for what I understand to be for local schools and nurseries, it may have taken some time, but the delivery was made, and we made our way back. 

The time in the truck, however, gave me the time to understand how Robby is setting himself up here.  He has procured a 5000sqm warehouse in Southwestern Ukraine, which Hope and Aid Direct has agreed to pay for and a small feeder warehouse in Slovakia where goods can come temporarily before being transported to the larger warehouse where he, we and others will be supplying food, toiletries, and other essential items to various places in Ukraine directly.  Where the aid will go will depend in part on safety issues and of course where the need is, although now that looks like everywhere. The coffee was postponed for the following day!

Day 3, yesterday, was a much more sedate affair but a successful one. I visited the feeder warehouse mentioned above and a separate warehouse further South.  This warehouse is being used by another NGO that we now have a loose agreement which.  Once firmed up, that will allow us to get aid into Slovakia by using them as the receiving NGO.

Given that many of the pieces of the puzzle are now falling into place it is time to put a call out for aid.  We can and will only accept the following items although please be aware that this list can and will change so before you start any major collections, please refer to this list:

• Nappies (Priority)
• Baby Milk powder/formula (Priority)
• NEW underwear – all ages ladies and men, plus bra's
• Blankets – all types, single bed size ideally
• Sleeping bags in stuff sacks
• Soap
• Shampoo
• Shower Gel
• Toothpaste
• Toothbrushes
• Sanitary pads
• Tampons
• Washing powder
• Tinned food – not meat or fish because of border complications (for now until clarification obtained, please also avoid and diary)
• Dried food – not rice or flour because of border restrictions.

Any items that are collected need to be correctly boxed and labelled and delivered directly to us or a drop off point.  The locations of these drop off points can be seen on the website.

Once we have all of the aid we need to transport it and something that we have been discussing as a team for some time now has been our fleet, in particular our smaller 7.5 tonne trucks.  We are conscious that there is now going to be more demand on our current trucks.  Given the environmental concerns around diesel vehicles combined with the number of ULEZ zones in our cities now we have purchased a 2016 MAN 7.5 tonne truck to add to the fleet, this truck is a EURO 6 emission standard so complies with current environmental regulations.  It is unlikely to be ready for the Moldova trip, but we are aiming to get it on the road as soon as is practically possible.

Lastly, but most definitely not least, fundraising.  Every newsletter always asks for funds, but the reality is that we cannot survive without them.

Our fundraiser has reached £18,000 at the time of writing, which is amazing but given the extent of this conflict and the number of trips to Eastern Europe that is going to be needed, we are going to have to keep up this good work.  Regular donations are key.  A £50 donation for example is fantastic but £10 a month, well you do the maths, it helps as us so much.

That is all for now, I am sorry and not so sorry for the length of this newsletter, I hope you feel that we have passed on what we know for now.  I aim to communicate with you again in between the first and second convoy and will endeavour to put update notes on the website a well.

Once again thank you to everyone involved who is helping in any way, big or small, through us or through other channels.