Help sort the humanitarian aid logistics challenge!
Are you trying to get donations to Ukraine?
Are you a concerned individual volunteer or part of a volunteer group hoping to get donations to refugees in Ukraine? Are you anxious to make sure that your efforts are not wasted?
Join the pop-up logistics communications WhatsApp group trying to ensure aid gets where it’s needed.
We’ve got contacts working on the ground in the camp on the Polish/Ukraine border which will be the reception point for refugees from Lviv, 50 miles away. Lviv had been seen as a safe haven for those fleeing towns and cities under attack and the normal population of around 2 million has ballooned to well over 3 million.
Lviv is now a target. The camp needs to be ready to accept numbers which will dwarf those seen to date.
People are already being very generous, but there are four challenges which need managing in a co-ordinated manner:
- The sorting and distribution of aid currently sitting in containers too far away from the camp to be handled by the camp volunteers. These containers are being looted.
- Harnessing people’s humanitarian impulses effectively. Kind-hearted individuals and groups are setting off from the UK and other European countries to deliver the donations they’ve collected with, often, no plan, no clear destination and no idea of what they will encounter when they reach a town or camp in Poland. They almost certainly won’t be getting into Ukraine.
- Making sure that donations are of goods that are actually needed, co-ordinating ‘shopping lists’ etc. The camp at Medyka, for example, knows exactly what they need in terms of medical supplies etc and right now, beyond the demand for medical supplies and equipment, they need children’s clothes, welcome packs for young people with toiletries, sanitary products etc. The medical teams are really glad to have a way to request specific items.
- Coordinating transport and load space on vehicles going to the border from the UK.
West Country Voices and UK4UKR have set up a WhatsApp group with people in the Medyka camp so that you can offer more targeted help.
People’s impulse to generosity is fantastic, but it’s really important that it does not go to waste.
If you want to make join the WhatsApp group, please contact us: editor@westcountryvoices.co.uk
