Séamus O’Hanlon joined a group of volunteers, including the Harwich Ukraine Support Project, delivering aid directly from Essex to Ukraine and providing medical supplies and ‘carrier cots’ to mothers, children, and those with disabilities in the Chernihiv district.
Here is an account of Séamus' first-hand experience in Ukraine from visiting an underground bunker beneath a maternity hospital to visiting a bombed village less than 15 miles from the Russian border:
Compassion, generosity, and hope unite both the Ukrainian people and every single person who has helped deliver aid from Essex to Ukraine – from knitters to drivers to charity shop volunteers.
In our society, too many people are turned away from caring about foreign politics, foreign wars, and foreign people partly as they believe the problems are too complex to understand and too difficult to ‘solve’.
What I witnessed in Ukraine, as a freelance journalist, is that though aid is not a definitive solution – there will always be need particularly in war – targeted international aid can transform and save lives.
At Chernihiv’s Maternity Hospital, Essex volunteers including myself handed over 10kg carrier cots filled with goods including blankets and nappies to exhausted but resilient mothers with often day-old babies – many still without names but all loved.
While beneath the hospital was a bunker where 137 babies were born during the siege of Chernihiv in April 2022.
Two years on the bunker, which is now becoming atom and nuclear bomb proof, still had its chalkboard with a '42' circled representing each day spent inside – a reminder of all the lives that had been created despite bombing and death.
In Ukraine I stayed in the Revival Centre – a health centre for children with disabilities.
We delivered aid directly to several single mothers with children with disabilities dressed in their Sunday best, cheerful, but without a doubt living in abject poverty.
One woman who has a 17-year-old daughter with cerebral palsy, receives a measly £20 a month from the government and had no washing machine – even more challenging because her daughter goes through dozens of bibs due to dribbling.
Harwich volunteer John Williams, 68, volunteered to get her a washing machine, and with his Harwich Ukraine Support Project charity shop friend Sue Armstrong, had it paid and installed for.
On the last day, about 15 miles from the Russian border, in a tiny village, we visited a house that had just two weeks prior been destroyed by a bomb.
While we heard the story of how this couple needs $14,000 to help them buy a permeant house in a poor but safe part of Chernihiv, their elderly neighbours, a married couple, introduced themselves.
Due to the Revival Centre’s contacts, all the British charities – the Felsted-based UK-aid, TEECH, and Harwich Ukraine Support Project – are now in the process of helping both families, with the continued generous support of the public’s donations.
Witnessing so much suffering in Ukraine, it is clear to me that there is no greater international priority to Britain, Europe, and the world than providing humanitarian aid to war-torn countries.
Ukraine is the shining light of the world because while its people defend themselves from Russia they protect.
Our achievable priority must be to give direct aid to strengthen Ukraine's spirit and help all its people in need.
To read Séamus' daily dispatches visit here and contact the Harwich Ukraine Support visit here.
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