| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | We meet face to face at long last | | | | The 'AGM' at the Premier Inn | | It's been a long time since we have spoken.... This is the first newsletter since the Ukraine - One Year On edition back in February, for which I feel I must apologise. For a lot of you who are involved in the charity on a day to day basis, you will know we have not been idle, but for those of you that are not so close we may have dropped off the radar slightly.
As volunteers we pushed things to the limits during our first year helping Ukraine and we needed a bit of time to regroup, reflect and work out next steps. We also needed to build on some new, important partnerships that will ensure that we can continue to help not only the people of Ukraine, but help in other humanitarian emergencies as required. This planning and thinking about the future takes a lot of blood, sweat and tears and in part, the past few months have been spent trying to put in place a structure that will allow us to continue helping those that need help.
We felt that not only what we had done in the past year, but what we want to do needed to be communicated to our volunteers, so on the 16th April we held a meeting for those people who are actively involved on a day to day basis. The aim was to come together, have a chat, learn our thoughts and allow input into the future of how we operate.
With this in mind, this month's newsletter takes a slightly different tack. Rather than discuss aid delivered and aid due to be delivered, for the most part it will concentrate on the meeting. We can then go back to business in May, when the next truck is due to hit the road, which will contain some mattresses, all part of a new exciting relationship that will be covered off shortly. A summary of the meeting that we had on the 16th April 2023 at The Premier Inn, South Mimms - By Claire Stevens.
This was the first in person volunteer meeting since Guildford in 2017 although we did have a zoom in 2021. It was a meeting of contrast from conversation down ‘memory lane’ to serious discussion as to the future and how the work will broaden over the next five years.
Volunteers came from all parts of the UK including Ireland and engaged in discussions over what they are achieving and how things could work better or more productive.
Recent historical events were briefly mentioned by Chas, Covid and Brexit being the obvious stumbling blocks in the last four years. Lockdown and increased customs paperwork made life challenging for all. However, the troubles in Ukraine in February 2022 made these pale into the background. The support and effort with this appeal lead to unprecedented donations pouring in both in physical aid and money. Total trucks to date amount to 41 with the next due to leave in May. The situation in Turkey and Syria is recognised and an appeal in place but difficulties lie in finding the right partnership currently to broaden our help. We continue to respond to the needs of France with NGO partnership Care4Calais. Our support in Greece has reduced due to the new import taxes imposed by the government making aid too expensive to send currently.
Roger outlined the Ukraine impact on the charity and work of the volunteers. Recruitment had been hard to achieve for some roles but having a new trustee is a success. Sadly, it has been challenging finding new volunteers for social media but the search continues. Aspirations and restructure to include corporate partnerships will be the focus ahead.
We were introduced to four videos that had been pre-recorded for the day. All praised Hope and Aid Direct (HaAD) highly from very different perspectives.
Ben Western our new trustee outlined his corporate ambitions for the charity. Corporations are now expected to work with humanitarian organisations in applying Environmental Social Governance. NGOs work with business to procure aid and deliver in an efficient manner. Ben believes this is another exciting and rewarding direction for HaAD alongside the current working method.
Alla, who leads Ukraine on Palms, informed about the current situation in Ukraine and how our support continues to benefit so many. Volunteer Tony Souter has been supporting Alla via HaAD particularly in procuring generators. | | | | Andrea, a human rights lawyer and volunteer aid worker, who discussed not only the work that we have done with her in and around Ukraine, but also her trip to Turkey. She highlighted the challenges facing organisations trying to move aid there, but also reassured people that a solution is almost in place that should, hopefully, allow for the distribution of aid in the near future.
Angus, from Herts4Refugees, gave insight to the challenges they face collecting aid from festival salvage, and the onward delivery to where needed most.
There was a Chas competition interlude of ‘pop up’ tent folding which enlightened the challenges of festival clearance. Pete won! The video showed good methodology of how to achieve a quick fold – no excuse not to attend the next festival to collect tents. | | | | Chas enlightened about the financial strength of the charity and answered specific questions raised by Karina which included proposed expenditure for the next year. Chas confirmed that £143,000 was raised through the Ukraine appeal of which £83,000 supported food and trucks last year with a further £75,000 needed for this year. The strategy of engaging corporate partnerships is high on the agenda and has already proved its worth with our relationship with Whitbread/Premier Inn. Nathan Phillip from Whitbread had organised a test run of mattresses following on from the bedding, 50,000 duvet and pillows, which were sent to Ukraine in May of last year. The test run proved successful and they are now committed to donating HaAD 2,000 Hypnos mattresses and to facilitate these future aid deliveries.
Logistics was covered by Chas of movement of both public and bulk aid with invaluable help from Roddy ferrying around most of England and constant commitment to loading the artic's.
Bob and Pete did a separate talk on the best practices for maintaining our trucks in for readiness for aid collections and deliveries.
Mary and Jo outlined warehouse challenges, issues and needs along with Judith and Karina, Celia and Maria on their experiences in different drop off points.
Roger set up a new website last year during a difficult time with so much Ukraine work to achieve. Some data migrated from the old website and the new fresh face has proved beneficial in facilitating donations and appeals. Facebook and Instagram are our platforms for updating on news and events along with the newsletter on the website.
Anna outlined our Instagram successes and Roger our social media needs. Understanding audiences and fundraising awareness being key to managing the Facebook account; we continue to advertise the volunteer role. The need for all to engage with the website and forward any relevant photos and videos remains an ongoing need.
As you would expect we overran but only by forty-five minutes. For such a committed group of people that was good going – there could have been endless stories and a continued feed of information that could have easily run into the night. The bar and restaurant were calling and so we turned off the lights!
There will be a HaAD annual meeting to be held in the early Spring 2024. There will be advance warning at the end of this year announcing the date. | | Janet Page - Life as a DOP | | There were many people who wanted to be there on the day that for one reason or another could not be. Many made contributions to the day by video or email. I was lucky enough to explain all I knew about about knitting courtesy of Sue Hoskinson, where I explained more about the amazing work done by a huge team of knitters around the world.
Another person who made a contribution by email was Janet Page, who manages one of our Drop Off Points (DOP's). The email in full is too long for one newsletter, so I feel a serialisation coming on due to the great and essential work these DOP's do. For now though a snippet..... It is a helpful reminder of how a little or large involvement adds up, and contributes to effective teamwork, which is one of the main reasons that HaAD has been so successful over the years.
What I have learned
The scattergun approach has a limited effect and can get lost in the melee of everything else, so be specific and targeted in your approach. Ask for the aid you want and can cope with packing.
Don’t be afraid to say no and explain why. It is now easy that we know what our partners ask for, and also can quote the cost of the backload.
Have a few other possible alternative outlets if you do end up with the dreaded black sacks of things you don’t want. Just last week I was offered a 2’ high wicker reindeer! Unfortunately it wasn’t on the Needs list so it will grace the Christmas decorations at the local Chapel.
To sum up – maintain contact with people in appropriate ways, be specific about what you are collecting, research prices, make it easy for people to help, use the skills of others, be sure to thank them – getting to know people and what their skills are is very important. Be adaptable. Target groups with specific requests, e.g. women’s groups always get behind the need for sanitary items. Get help in other ways, I have two people who just collect banana boxes for me – they have built up relationships with their ‘suppliers’ and it is a huge help to me. This is all they do, but it is invaluable. | | | | | | | | | | | | Roughly this time last year, Premier Inn, who are owned by Whitbread contacted us as they had 50,000 duvets and pillow that they were refreshing and wanted to send to Ukraine, some of you will remember this as we reported on this back then.
History often shows corporates making a one-off donation at times of crisis and then disappearing never to be heard of again, not Whitbread, not Premier Inn and not Nathan Phillip and the amazing team behind a great new partnership with Hope and Aid Direct.
Premier Inn are now refreshing their mattresses, thousands of them, again wanting them to go to Ukraine and / or Turkey. We have been working very hard with Andrea (mentioned above) and Alla from Ukraine on Palms to understand needs of these items. As they are doubles they are not as easy to move and take up a lot of space on the trucks, so we have needed to make sure that the supply chain is secure and the aid will be able to be properly distributed on arrival.
We took on the project and I am very happy to report it's initial success. We took a same of 15 mattresses to Alla as part of a mixed load to make sure she and they were happy with them, the video below, even for those of us who don't speak Ukrainian I think shows the success of this first load. The before and after in terms of the beds in the video tell a story. We all know how grumpy you can be if you have a bad night's sleep, and many of us will know how comfy Premier Inn mattresses are, so this really is a lifechanging donation.
Due to the success of this initial load we think we now have enough recipients for 150-200 mattresses a month, with the possibility of some of these going to Turkey, although Turkey remains complicated.
Also following this initial load a presentation was made to the board by the Whitbread team, this was the feedback from Nathan:
Myself and Rosanna ( our sustainability director ) have just come out of the main board who have unanimously approved to fund our proposal to get up to 2000 mattresses across to Ukraine. In logistical terms this means that we will arrange storage for around 10 months, and are committed to roughly 30 full loads of mattresses to go over across that period. Thankyou for your support at getting us to this point which I think is pivotal, and I am nervously excited of what the future will be as I think we may be opening the floodgates to other opportunities.
All parties are firmly of the belief that this is the start of a long term relationship and given the turnover of goods in the 800+ hotels around the UK, this relationship could and should have a material impact not only in our operation but importantly in the quality and quantity of aid that can be delivered to those most in need.
We need a few more Nathan's and a few more Whitbread's please. Thank you to everyone involved in this great project and partnership. | | | | | | | | There are of course a lot of people who are involved in getting our aid on the road but historically the Rotary organisations around the UK have played a key part in the help that we are able to provide. In the past Rotary have helped with aid and fundraising for Kosovo and Greece and they continue to do so in Ukraine.
Diane Roworth is a long term supporter of HaAD and has worked with Rotary to procure 35 gas stoves which Roddy has ensured are now in Basildon ready for the next backload to Kyiv. In addition Diane has another 12 boxes of food and blankets and also some sleeping bags.
Thank you Diane for the support that you continue to provide both personally and as part of Rotary. | | | | | | | | | | | | You are receiving this email as you signed up for our newsletters. Want to no longer receive these emails?
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