Practical help for Ukrainian war refugees

Aim

Funds for: electricity generators to power medical and shelter tents, food, clothes, blankets, and everything needed to survive in Ukraine.

If you live in the UK and would like to practically add your drop of help to support people in Ukraine who suffer from this senseless war, you can.

I live in Scotland but I am from Lublin in Poland, which is 60 miles from the Ukrainian border. I fundraise to help my friends in Lublin who coordinate practical support for Ukrainian war refugees. 

My friends in Lublin are academics, working at the University there, but overnight they had to 're-qualify' and leave their desks to engage in helping our Ukrainian neighbours. They fundraise, collect clothes, food, tents, organise vehicles for transporting people to safety, and much more. I have known these people for over 20 years and I trust them. 

At the moment they need electricity generators. One 3kW generator that can power a medical tent, a shelter tent, or a small house, costs about £300. We have a good deal from FOGO, a company that sells them in Poland, because normally they are twice that price. 

Here's what will happen with your money: Once enough money has been fundraised for a generator, I will buy it online and arrange with my contact in FOGO for it to be added to a batch sent to my friend Oleg in Lublin, Eastern Poland. Oleg or another friend that speaks Ukrainian will then take all the purchased generators to the Polish/Ukrainian border to pass them on to a couple of Ukrainian friends, Ola and Igor, who run a charity there and are allowed to distribute them where they are needed the most. 

This action is urgent because thousands of displaced people need shelter and the wounded ones need taken care of. We have been told that many more refugees are expected to flee to the Polish border after the recent bombing of Odessa and Zaporizhzhia, near Crimea. 

*** UPDATE (22/03/2022): I have just heard the director of Regional Clinical Hospital in Kropyvnytskyi, a city in central Ukraine. The hospital is located next to the airport and the military aviation school, which is why it is threatened with bombing. The generator is needed to provide the emergency power supply in the bomb shelter for the whole hospital, where the staff will be able to keep providing medical support to the patients.

I have initially set a fundraiser goal for 2 smaller generators but donors have been incredibly generous so we have already managed to purchase and send to Ukraine eight of them. Larger equipment, that can power the a few hospital wards, is more expensive, it costs over £3,000 each. This means that the fundraising link will remain open until 28th March 2022 to help purchase a large generator and send it to the hospital; hopefully before the front line reaches the city. ***

Fundraising to help the Ukrainians is not a sprint, it will most likely be a marathon. The situation in Ukraine is dynamic and the needs will keep changing day by day. I will therefore keep fundraising, depending on the current needs.

Thank you,  

Monika

P.S. To reassure donors that this fundraiser is genuine and well coordinated, here are the contact details to our team that works together: 

Dr Monika McNeill: https://www.linkedin.com/in/monikasuchomska/?originalSubdomain=uk 

Associate Prof. Oleg Gorbaniuk: https://pracownik.kul.pl/oleg.gorbaniuk 

Dr Paweł Fortuna: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pawel-fortuna-8884691/?originalSubdomain=pl

FOGO: https://www.fogo.pl/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=623:pomagamy-ukrainie&catid=45:pl

Ukrainian Charity 'Caritas': https://caritas-sde.org/en/

This project successfully funded on 3rd April 2022