Grantham volunteers return home after delivering thousands of donated items to Poland for Ukraine
Grantham volunteers have returned home from Poland after successfully delivering thousands of items donated in aid of Ukraine.
On Tuesday, March 15, the team safely made it home after travelling to Tuchow, Poland, to deliver all of the items that had been donated by residents in the Grantham area and collected at Walton Academy.
The team began their journey to Poland on Friday, March 10, with an 11-hour overnight crossing from Hull to Rotterdam, and then drove 900 miles to Tuchow, arriving on Sunday, March 12.
The transport team was made up of Darren Crompton from Grantham Truck Services, Chris Webster from UKSARS Ltd, , Bradley O'Hara from Alpha Asset Finance, Matt Thompson and Mark Rowe, both of Grantham, and Nick Bowler of Bourne.
The vans were provided by UK Roof Solution's Ltd and Pre Sure from Boston, and the lorry was offered with a driver from Holdridge Transport Ltd and driven by the owner, Nick, who's wife Louise provided customs and logistics support, and Mark Eley as the support driver.
Walton Academy teacher Lukasz Madejski had organised the collection which saw tens of thousands of items being donated across the community to be delivered to his home town of Tuchow near the border with Ukraine.
The collection started by Lukasz and his sister Katarzyna Czajkowska gathered almost 20,000 items of clothing, 30,000 nappies, 12,000 baby wipes and 60 sleeping bags for Ukrainian refugees, in addition to other items such as medical aid.
One of the drivers, Mark Rowe, explained that upon their arrival they were directed to the commercial units in the town, where they were met by a large team of volunteers, including the town mayor, deputy mayor, and an English teacher from the local primary school to act as an interpreter.
Mark said: "The atmosphere when we arrived was very upbeat, we felt their excitement, anticipation and gratefulness.
"We also got the impression that some of them had never met anyone from England before."
The commercial units were used to sort through all of the donations and distribute them accordingly, and before the team's arrival the town had just received donations with some kit from Ireland.
Mark added: "All the sleeping bags that we took over were almost immediately dispatched just over the border to the Ukranian army, and the temperature that night was minus degrees."
All of the other donated items were sorted and sent to Baranivka, which is almost 100 miles west of Kyiv, and also the town twinned with Tuchow.
Mark said: "The hospitality we received was nothing short of amazing, we were looked after by the mayors of the town.
"Whilst we were driving to and from the village we witnessed a huge amount of humanitarian aid running over the border in vans and various large vehicles, with number plates from all over Europe."
Before the team left they were given a guided tour of the town and were able to see the donated items from Grantham area being loaded and leaving for Ukraine.
Mark said: "The whole experience has been overwhelming as we've witnessed the effort first hand from everyone all over Europe and seeing aid kit from Grantham being sent into a war zone is a very humbling experience indeed."
Mark explained how the team became involved. He said: "We all became involved with taking the items over to Poland after seeing what was going on at Walton academy with their teacher Łukasz Madejski. We were advised to approach the round table of Grantham to offer our assistance.
"After chatting with Bobby Greasley from the Round Table, we all quickly got on board. Bobby and his team had already arranged the huge task of clearing the school of all the donations and storage of all the items. They then quickly got to work and established the load manifests and arranged the loading of vehicles.
"Just a personal thank you to all of you that financially supported us which got us home and a huge thank you to our new friends from the beautiful town of Tuchow."