Food lifelines packed with love in Leicester today… in war-weary Ukraine by Saturday – thanks to YOUR help! ROBERT HARDMAN sees the rallying aid efforts fuelled by Mail Force appeal
- 15,000 boxes full of food are now being sent from the UK to Ukraine every day
- The scheme, led by Ukraine’s ambassador to the UK, was helped by Mail readers
- Each box has 12,000 calories of food and takes less than a week to reach Ukraine
First, it’s the chopped tomatoes along with the can of hot dogs – the heavy stuff. Next, it’s a can of tuna and a jumbo bag of porridge oats. Within a minute, this seven-kilo box is full of food – enough to feed an adult for a week – and it’s transferred to the next available pallet here on a Leicestershire industrial estate.
As of this morning, this box will be somewhere in northern Europe. Tomorrow it will be in a depot on Poland.
And by the weekend, it will be in the hands of a grateful, if ravenous, civilian in a war-weary part of eastern Ukraine – and not a moment too soon.
Quite apart from pushing back the massed forces of a ruthless superpower, the government of this vast European nation is having to cope with the monumental task of keeping its population fed and watered when all forms of ordinary, civilian life are under attack. For millions, that includes a trip to the shops for the most basic human essentials.
Make no mistake. The military state of play may be dominating our daily headlines. Lurking not far behind, however, is the prospect of a devastating humanitarian crisis if the so-called ‘bread basket of Eastern Europe’ finds itself barren – as it now does.
Supply lines which deliver 15,000 boxes of food from the UK to Ukraine a day are now fully up and running (pictured: Vitalina Polishenko who works on the packing line for the boxes in Leicester)
And so, it falls to the wider world to join the rescue effort. And that is where this extraordinary humanitarian operation now kicks in, led by the Ukrainian ambassador to the UK and his embassy team, and by some of Britain’s best-known businesses and tens of thousands of Mail readers who have also contributed millions of pounds to the pot.
In a matter of days, a magnificent team effort has gone from the drawing board, to several trial runs, to the start line.
Yesterday, for the first time, it went fully operational – to the tune of 15,000 boxes per day (seven days per week). Each box amounts to 12,000 calories, spread across more than a dozen items, all selected on the advice of nutritionists in the Ukrainian ministry of food to provide optimum sustenance in the most trying of circumstances.
The cost of assembling, packing and delivering the first 500,000 boxes across a continent (at £10 a time) is being shared between the Ukrainian embassy in London and the Mail Force charity.
For all the logistical challenges here at the first phase of the endeavour, this is the least worrying part of a process which becomes progressively harder towards the end.
Ukrainian Ambassador to the UK, Vadym Prystaiko, said the food packages will ‘literally save people’s lives’
It is one thing raising funds, filling boxes in the East Midlands and delivering the results to the Ukrainian border. But on the other side, the heroic drivers and crews of trucks and trains taking this precious cargo on the final leg will be risking their lives to ensure every bag of Morrison’s pasta and every tin of kidney beans ends up in the right place.
Nonetheless, each link in this great collaborative exercise should take a bow. That includes the pensioners forgoing their heating allowance and the children donating their pocket money to the Mail Force Ukraine Appeal so they can help someone they have never met.
It is important to stress that not one penny of your donations is wasted on administrative fees or overheads. Everything is either being donated or delivered at cost with the grateful thanks of the Ukrainian embassy in London, the driving force behind this operation.
In the words of Ambassador Vadym Prystaiko: ‘Russian forces have deliberately shelled farms, killed livestock, and laid landmines on agricultural land.
‘Your amazing support will literally save people’s lives. The 500,000 food boxes you have supplied will go to people most in need in the midst of the greatest European catastrophe in our living memory.’
Ambassador Vadym Prystaiko said Russian forces deliberately targeted Ukraine’s food production facilities, meaning the food packages are vital (pictured: residents in Mariupol)
It was just a month ago that Mr Prystaiko and his team were sitting around a table with Lord Bilimoria, the president of the Confederation of British Industry, and two dozen CBI members, all of whom had committed to help with essential supplies.
The overarching challenge was not just to get this stuff to Ukraine – but in the most practical way possible. A lorry-load of tinned meat is of limited use if the distribution centre at the other end is a bomb site, along with many of the supermarkets which it once supplied. In simple terms, it is crucial for the shopping basket to be filled at this end.
Step forward Oakland International, the family-run packing and distribution company with a fleet of 80 trucks and a hyperactive chief executive. Dean Attwell’s first response to the Ukrainian crisis was to source whatever food and supplies he could lay his hands on and load it all on to a fleet of Ukrainian trucks which had been stranded in Britain following the outbreak of war.
He gave their drivers all the fuel, money and paperwork they needed to get home and then set about exploring ways of repeating the exercise.
His efforts dovetailed with those at the embassy and the CBI, at which point the Mail Force charity joined the party, backed by this newspaper’s formidably generous legion of readers.
And in an astonishingly short space of time, this great undertaking has now achieved lift-off. As our sister paper, The Mail on Sunday, reported this weekend, when it launched the campaign, the machinery and supply lines have now been assembled.
Yesterday everything kicked off at full capacity and at top speed. Last night half a dozen trucks – each packed with nearly 2,500 boxes – set off for the Channel, with just one exception. One box was diverted to the Ukrainian embassy in London so that Ambassador Prystaiko and his staff could see what they have achieved.
It’s not often that a tin of beans and a packet of basmati rice bring a tear to the eye. Last night was the exception. Among the hundreds of new recruits on the packing line here at the vast Oakland depot in Coalville, I find one person for whom filling a row of boxes is not just paying the bills but an act of national pride. ‘It is so sad watching the news every night but I am so happy to be doing something for my country,’ says Vitalina Polishenko, 25, from the Ukrainian town of Chernivtsi.
Now living in Coventry with her builder husband, Nikolay, she is in daily contact with her mother back at home. Both are frantic with worry about Vitalina’s father, Igor, 50, who has volunteered for the Ukrainian forces to do his bit.
‘It’s scary for my mother being all alone. We don’t know where my father is – he can’t tell us – but we do try to speak to him every day,’ says Vitalina during her half-hour break in between four-hour shifts.
Today, she finds herself on the baked beans section here at one of Oakland’s four humanitarian production lines. She heard about this new job through a local agency and signed up in an instant.
Here, too, I meet Sally George, from global management consultancy Accenture, which is focusing all its logistical expertise on this endeavour free of charge. She has come to check that all the production lines are doing what they are supposed to do in the allotted time.
It’s cold in here. If it feels like a fridge, it is because Oakland normally specialises in delivering chilled foods to every retailer in the land. And so the staff are all wrapped up, gloved and humming along to the radio blaring out above the hum of the chiller units.
In the adjacent warehouse area, the chief exec Dean shows me what the first 150,000 boxes of food look like before the packing stage: Multi-storey racks of shrink-wrapped cans and packets as far as the eye can see.
Most have come from big name retailers, notably Morrison’s. There is a separate section of extra supplies donated by Dean’s home town of Redditch, and sourced by his son, Samuel. These will simply be added into the boxes as a bonus to fill up any available extra space – a packet of biscuits here, a jar of pickles there. ‘It all makes a difference,’ says Dean cheerfully.
It is a reminder that, however helpless we may feel in the face of such ghastliness on the far side of the continent, there really is something we can do about it. It may not seem much. But when it ends up feeding half a million people – and that is just for starters – it is more than a gesture.
For these ostensibly unexceptional scenes on an East Midlands industrial estate genuinely represent a collective war effort which could help avert a humanitarian catastrophe in 21st century Europe.
The Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday and MailOnline UKRAINE REFUGEE APPEAL
Readers of Mail Newspapers and MailOnline have always shown immense generosity at times of crisis.
Calling upon that human spirit, we are supporting a huge push to raise money for refugees from Ukraine.
For, surely, no one can fail to be moved by the heartbreaking images and stories of families – mostly women, children, the infirm and elderly – fleeing from Russia’s invading armed forces.
As this tally of misery increases over the coming days and months, these innocent victims of a tyrant will require accommodation, schools and medical support.
Donations to the Mail Force Ukraine Appeal will be used to help charities and aid organisations providing such essential services.
In the name of charity and compassion, we urge all our readers to give swiftly and generously.
TO MAKE A DONATION ONLINE
Donate at www.mailforcecharity.co.uk/donate
To add Gift Aid to a donation – even one already made – complete an online form found here: mymail.co.uk/ukraine
Via bank transfer, please use these details:
Account name: Mail Force Charity
Account number: 48867365
Sort code: 60-00-01
TO MAKE A DONATION VIA CHEQUE
Make your cheque payable to ‘Mail Force’ and post it to: Mail Newspapers Ukraine Appeal, GFM, 42 Phoenix Court, Hawkins Road, Colchester, Essex CO2 8JY
TO MAKE A DONATION FROM THE US
US readers can donate to the appeal via a bank transfer to Associated Newspapers or by sending checks to dailymail.com HQ at 51 Astor Place (9th floor), New York, NY 10003
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