It is just over 12 weeks since the war in Ukraine started.
Whilst the newsletters may have at times been a bit thin on the ground the number of trucks leaving the UK have not. As of today, we have either driven or facilitated 20 trucks of aid to Ukraine a phenomenal effort and we would like to thank everyone who has played a part in this however big or small. It is truly remarkable.
There will be many seasoned veterans reading this newsletter, but also a lot of people who are relatively new to both Hope and Aid Direct and / or humanitarian aid in general so if you will allow me a moment to cover off a bit of history and bring things up to date.
When we started, we operated convoys into the Balkans, small and large trucks heading into Kosovo and other Eastern European countries, delivering, and distributing aid (and hope) directly into the hands of those that needed it the most. For many years we operated this model running 2 or 3 convoys a year. Each crisis brings new challenges and with the refugee crisis in Europe since 2015 we needed to adapt. At first, we could still access camps and individual refugees but after a while the Greek government closed off this access and we had to move to a business model that used central warehouses managed by local organisations to store and distribute aid and we has less direct involvement with the beneficiaries albeit we still worked on several important projects and gained access where possible.
Ukraine has thrown the cards up in the air once again and as they have landed where they have and we have once again adapted our approach to what is needed. In summary this means bulk aid, regularly to as many people as we can possibly help. Personally, I have a likened it to moving from running a corner shop to running John Lewis (other department stores are available) overnight.
It has meant that the many years of experience we have, has been called on by several organisations and corporates which has once again forced an adaptation of the business model. Many companies have their own transport, so they have needed our wherewithal and contacts or help with paperwork to get things moving. We have therefore played a key role in some life saving critical equipment moving out to Ukraine, projects that if we are honest with ourselves, we could not have completed on our own, we just don’t have the resources to do so, but working together in this way has allowed many people to benefit.
So, I can now explain little more about the 20 trucks.
7 of the trucks are Hope and Aid Direct trucks, 5 artics (the big 40 tonne above was 3 of these and the other 2 were a Roadtrain artics driven by a partner of ours) and 2 smaller 7.5 tonne trucks
4 are trucks supplied by Maritime, who are the transport partner for Premier Inn / Whitbread and who are working with us to deliver 50,000 bedding sets to a variety of partners in Ukraine, including the sustainable development goals arm of the United Nations. Yes, you read that right the UN are getting some of their aid from us.
9 back loads. Many of you will not know this terminology. This is another approach that we have needed to embrace for Ukraine. We have done this before but in much smaller volumes. Many trucks arrive in the UK each day from Europe, bringing with them food, clothing, machinery etc, they go home empty, this clearly is a waste of space and environmental resources. You can purchase this space and send the truck to where it needs to go as a ‘backload’. Given the amount of aid that we have needed to send we have used this type of arrangement for items such as the water containers that are now being used in Ukraine to supply clean drinking water and the 400 hospital beds that were sent out towards the beginning of the war as well as several of these loads being goods that we have helped others move.
Another backload is heading out next week so our total at that point will move to 21 trucks. Details of what we have taken can be found on the website.
