Our aid goes to a new partner in Slovakia and our blankets reach Irpin.

Ukraine response

Hope and Aid Direct rely heavily on their local partners, and their knowledge, and access to those in need continues to be extremely challenging. At least 13 million people are estimated to be stranded in areas most affected by active fighting. In the last couple of months, through our partners we have delivered humanitarian aid to areas across Ukraine including:

• Kharkiv an area which has the highest number of people displaced but also hosts the highest number of internally displaced persons across Ukraine.  As of September the recorded figure was 164,000.  The highest needs continue to be shelter, food, medicine and hygiene.

• Kyiv region, including Irpin, once a commuter city in the Kyiv region, is now smoke and rubble with only the most vulnerable people still living there.

5th convoy completed

Four volunteers, Brian and Shaun in the 40-tonne artic, and Chas and Graham in Frantic (7.5-ton lorry) have just completed the charity’s fifth convoy using our own trucks since March this year.  The drivers departed the UK on the Sunday 2nd October and arrived in Bratislava, Slovakia on Tuesday 4th October where they met our partners, Integra SK. 

Over 20-tonnes of essential humanitarian aid collected and donated by many of you, including Medical aid, food, hygiene and sanitary items, sleeping bags and blankets, clothes, shoes, toys and baby cots/carry cots were unloaded for onward distribution into Ukraine.

All of the aid is now in Kharkiv, north-eastern Ukraine for immediate distribution across Ukraine to those in need. Identified by our partners and colleagues on the ground.

This takes the total number of trucks delivering humanitarian aid to Ukraine this year to 36! Thank you to all our supporters, volunteers and everyone involved along the way to make this happen… Hope and Aid Direct will continue trucking…..

Ukraine on Palms

In our August newsletter we advised of our work with local partners, Ukraine on Palms.  Here are some photos of the aid distribution in Ukraine last month.

‘Hello! We received your parcel, we are infinitely grateful to you for such help, everything necessary for hygiene and taking care of ourselves and our family. Infinite thanks from us all’ 

‘Tetyana is a confectioner living in Irpin, Kyiv region. She now ekes out a living for herself and her daughters using a pan on a stove at the temporary centre. Where she is living, as her home has been destroyed  She holds onto her dream of opening and owning her own bakery in the future’.

2022 Festival Salvage collections completed, and distributions made

Following our Festival salvage collections in partnership with Herts for Refugees this summer, Seven of Hope and Aid Direct’s volunteers, along with Angus from Herts for Refugees drove four x 7.5 tonne trucks to Calais and Dunkirk one sunny Sunday in September and delivered thousands of tents and sleeping bags to Mobile Refugee Support and Collective Aid.  These essential items provide immediate protection to vulnerable men and women, especially after the regular police evictions made in camps.  Tents provide immediate and temporary shelter to thousands of refugees living in Northern France. Sleeping bags are urgently needed to provide warmth and some comfort, especially as temperatures begin to fall.

MRS and Collective Aid are grassroots organisations on the ground, whose volunteers work tirelessly to help men, women and children living in horrific conditions with the basic essentials.

A BIG thank you to Allied in Chelmsford for your support!

Marathon man!

More than 40,000 runners took on the London Marathon this year, running from Greenwich to The Mall on Sunday 2nd October.  One of them was Anthony Doyle, who ran for Hope and Aid Direct!  Raising over £2,000 in 3h10minutes, plus of course all the additional training time!... Anthony said ‘ From the start the only winner for me was the charity. This was my motivation from the outset. I think collectively we achieved something great!’ “There is no strength without unity”. 

Thank you Anthony for your incredible support !