By Eleanor Holdsworth

KIND-HEARTED Dunchurch people have been playing their part to send donations to Ukrainian people fleeing the Russian invasion.

I got in touch with just two of them to find out more.

By air

Village resident Marie Thompson was part of a team collecting and sorting donations with the group ‘From Ryton to Ukraine’. Together they sent 13 big boxes of baby food, warm clothes and more to go on a private jet which landed in Romania on Saturday night (12th March 2022).

The humanitarian flight carrying donations from across the UK was provided by private jet company AirX. Lead flight engineer Andrew Hobbs is an old friend of Marie’s and was instrumental in getting the donations off the ground.

Marie Thompson said: “Why wouldn’t I help out? Just giving money isn’t enough for me and I felt compelled to do more.”

The group of volunteers in Ryton, including Marie, sorted and organised approximately 55kg of donations into boxes so they could be processed easily at the airport.

The donations included cards sent by children in Ryton to Ukrainian children with pictures and messages of support in English and Ukrainian.

Andrew Hobbs confirmed that the flight had landed just after 7pm on Saturday night, local time.

He said in a Facebook message that any donations which didn’t fit on Saturday’s plane would be loaded onto further flights or transported by road.

By land

Dunchurch’s Jill Carlton has also been busy helping to pack donations for Ukrainian people too, to travel by lorry to the Ukrainian border. 

Jill collected donations from her neighbours in Dunchurch to deliver to family friend Anthony Hopkins in Lutterworth, who was organising the transport.

Jill said: “I got involved because my son used to work for Anthony. His wife is Slovakian and felt he needed to do something. You just want to do something and I was more than happy to help.

“We helped for a few hours last weekend. They had a good system with helpers too. We had a full lorry-load by Sunday, and now Anthony is halting collecting donations until they know what’s needed more. And then he’ll organise another lorry load.

“There was so much paperwork and red tape to get the donations sent, but Anthony was amazed and overwhelmed.

“I wasn’t one of the organisers but my time was offered by my son and I was more than happy to get involved and help. It’s just a drop in the ocean compared to what other people are doing, really, but it was good to be involved.”

The donations collected in Lutterworth will be sent directly to a charity in Slovakia which had storage facilities on the border with Ukraine, and will organise getting the donations into Ukraine.