As today marks one year since Russian forces invaded Ukraine, local organisations have said they will be providing assistance throughout the war and for as long as it takes to rebuild the country.
More than 2,000 boxes of clothes and essential supplies and more than 15,000 hand-knitted baby items have been delivered to displaced Ukrainian people by local groups.
Digital marketer Sofia Noakes and businesswoman Natalia Silvester starting brainstorming a donation strategy after Mrs Silvester was affected by the images and updates coming out of her home country, Poland, and watching families being forced out of their homes and separated.
What started off as a small initiative grew into registered charity Humanitarian Aid Guernsey which has made some seven trips to Ukraine’s neighbouring countries with supplies.
The charity has no intention of stopping the donation drive in future.
‘Should the war end imminently, we will continue to help as they rebuild.
‘It could take them years to get back to where they were before,’ said Miss Noakes.
When donations first opened at the beginning of March 2022, the team was overwhelmed and had to move locations to cater for all of the items.
The post office initially supplied the resources to ship the donations, but the initiative grew so large that Jason Brouard of Stan Brouard offered to drive the supplies himself.
On 16 March, HAG was registered as an official charity to expand the influence of help it could provide.
‘Working as fast as we did, we had to become very particular about the donations we were accepting,’ said Miss Noakes.
‘Initially we’d been taking items such as Sudocrem and paracetamol, but there came issues with taking that across the border as instructions were in English, going to a place where not everyone could read English.’
More than 2,000 boxes have now been delivered to Slovakia, Poland and Hungary, and the charity now works in partnership with a UK company for ease in transporting supplies.
For other islanders, knitting baby hats was not how they predicted their 2022 would go.
Set up by Guernsey’s honorary consul for the Republic of Latvia, Lilita Kruze, more than 350 knitted baby hats were sent to Poland and Latvia just four days after Russia’s invasion.
One year on, now more than 15,000 items have been sent over.
Residential homes and groups around the island have joined in over the year with knitting parties.
Ms Kruze said she never had expected such a big response, and that no one could have imagined knitting baby hats, clothes and toys to be sent away.
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