PAUL’S UKRAINE DIARY

In January, Team BRIT driver Paul Fullick returned to Ukraine with his charity ‘Ukraine Sunflower Aid’ to deliver crucial aid. He talks us through the trip, why he supports this crucial work and his plans for the future.

Our January trip had four main objectives:

1. Deliver aid to the Orphanage that we support in Lviv. Toys and supplies were collected in London from ‘The White Eagle appeal’ which is a charity that we work closely with.

2. Deliver medical supplies for the main hospital in Kiev. We collect them from ‘British Ukraine Aid’, a charity that specifically collects medical aid, and we deliver them to places such as the hospital in Kiev. This time we were also able to donate one of the Draper generators, donated via Team BRIT.

3. Meet with other charities. This is part of almost every trip and it’s a way for us to assess who needs what aid and to ensure we know exactly where our aid is destined for.

4. Combine aid that is partly from the UK, including that donated by Team BRIT partners CDW, Draper and Adrian Flux, and partly from stocks in Western Ukraine, then deliver it to the Eastern fronts where the largest number of displaced people are. On this trip, I teamed up with ‘Siobahn’s Trust’ who travel around a number of sites in eastern Ukraine cooking pizza for people who are left in these regions. They provide an extremely popular and needed service to these areas, and they are supported by the local Ukrainian security and police services. This gives us an ideal base to attach onto to and hand out aid in an organised and secure manner.

The aid we delivered this time was a mixture of medical supplies, generators and front line aid. The medical aid is always our priority, and any space we have left is filled with front line aid. The generators are increasingly important as the power network is a constant target and power outages are common. This leaves people with no heat or light and during winter it’s not uncommon for the temperature to reach well below zero. While this affects everyone in Ukraine, people in the eastern regions are generally the ones who can’t leave for specific reasons. Some will be too elderly or sick, others have stayed to look after them.

The environment we see is one of hardship and heartbreak. I’ve not met a single person that is unaffected by the situation: most of them have lost someone, or something. Many are missing limbs, and whilst I can relate to this, I find it extremely hard to imagine what it’s like to lose an arm or a leg in the middle of a world falling apart around you. Despite this, almost every encounter I have ends in the same parting words“Slava Ukraine”. It is a phrase coined back from the war of independence in the 1920s and means ‘Glory to Ukraine’. I’ve started to understand the mindset of the people here: they have a blitz-type spirit and will not accept anything less than victory. I find it admirable, relatable and commendable in the face of such adversity. In any conflict, the moral of the fighting forces and the people they are defending is a force multiplier. You can do more with less, if your heart is in it. The people of Ukraine are steadfast in their ability to succeed, even if there isn’t a clear vision of what victory looks like. You might get a different answer depending on who you ask, but still- victory none the less.

Looking ahead, our priority is our application to become an official charity. When we started, we were just a bunch of people who met in a pub and started taking aid to Ukraine. It was somewhat ad hoc, but it worked out and part of our success was our ability to react quickly to the needs on the ground. As we have grown and settled, we’ve had time to take stock and get our house in order: our application to gain charity status is the accumulation of this effort. Secondly, we are in talks with DAF trucks who are interested in supporting us as we are looking into the possibility of using one of their trucks to upscale our operations significantly and reducing our operating costs. Diesel isn’t getting any cheaper!

We’ve accomplished a lot as a small charity, but we have so much more to do. The aid that we bring to these people is important from a supply point of view, but it’s also essential to show them they are not forgotten. As many of them often tell us, they think no one cares and they are always delighted to see that someone has travelled so far to visit and help them. To us, they will certainly never be forgotten.