Hello, I'm Bob, founder of Didcot to Dnipro.

I lived in Dnipro, a major Hub city in Eastern Ukraine, around 500km south of Kyiv and around 120 km north of Zaporizhia, for nearly 7 years. I had a business, home and a good number of friends.

The Russian full-scale Invasion in February 2022 changed all that, except that Dnipro is still a major hub city with many more displaced and injured people arriving there from the East and South East of Ukraine.

I happened to be in the UK in February 2022 and had to watch from afar what was happening there. It was very personal and very frustrating!

Didcot to Dnipro is my small effort to try and help the displaced Ukrainians gain a sense of stability when all around them is changing so fast, and to provide them with some comfort from the knowledge that they are not forgotten.

The Goals and Objectives of this initiative are simple, though not easily achieved!

1 To provide humanitarian aid to the displaced people, sufficient that they can take a breath and start rebuilding their lives.

2 To provide First Responders with much needed resources so they can help people who have been injured, who have lost their homes, their families and livelihoods. First to stabilise their condition as much as possible, then, if they want, evacuate them from "Red Zones". We already have contacts with several voluntary aid groups who do this dangerous work and we will support them in their efforts with body armour, communications, first aid and medical supplies.

3 To help provide assistance to local people to build quality, sustainable, healthy accommodation in accordance to their needs. This includes infrastructure and resources that will remain in use well after the war finishes and will be vital for the health, wellbeing of people, particularly children, and recovery of their economy.

4 We aim to provide a "Hand-up" not a "Hand-out". There isn't much that Ukrainians need teaching, it is more about giving them the tools to do what they already know how, or will quickly figure out, to do.

Using commercial carriers and contacts who were travelling to the Polish border, new body armour kits, TAC radios, chemical body warming pads, field first aid kits, funds towards rebuilding homes and medicines have been provided to groups already working in the region.

This is too slow and too expensive to sustain, but has been a start.

To get more to where it is needed and provide some real ‘hands-on help’ we have bought a Luton bodied 3.5 ton curtain side van, called “Terry the Tortoise” and fitted it with racking for the aid materials we are taking.

This is around 80% filled with high energy, high protein, ready to eat food that can be eaten hot or cold, chemical warming pads, first aid kits, UHT milk, LED rechargeable lights, personal hygiene products, medical provisions, creativity packs for children, bedding and emergency power supply units – these are our design and build and are powered by large batteries. When the mains power goes off, these units provide 230 volts ac to power small appliances such as microwave ovens or air fryers, both of which we have as a part of the load, for around 2-3 hours. These units also provide USB charging for phones and LED lighting as well as other communications equipment (2 way radios) and medical equipment.

The van was scheduled to depart the week starting 11 September, but a family trust that pledged to sponsor us £5,000 has had to withdraw due to unforeseen circumstances, this includes the co-driver for the 2000 mile each way trip.

This leaves us critically short of the funds needed to fill the van and cover fuel, ferry crossing, toll charges, load inspection and customs fees, vehicle insurance through the EU and accommodation. Our projected budget for all this was £5800 for the 60 days we were originally going for. This has meant we have had to cut the time away, therefore the amount of work we can do there, down to 10 days. This is a huge disappointment.

We have not asked anyone to contribute to this effort to this point. We felt people in the UK have their own problems in the current economic climate. We feel very strongly that, if Russia wins this war in Ukraine, things will get very much more difficult in the UK, EU and globally. This is already being felt sharply in Africa and regions to the east of Africa, who depend on the huge amount of grain and other products supplied by Ukraine, and to a lesser extent, Russia. This adds considerably to our food prices here in the UK too.

Now, we find we need to ask for help. We have raised over £33,000 for what we have done so far, and to be £5,000 short, just 15%, is very frustrating.

Every pound helps. Every pound will be used exactly for the purposes outlined above. If more than our £5,000 target is donated, then the extra will be used to buy water purification machines that produce 100 litres of clinical grade water a day from almost any water source, use little power and do not require filters. These machines have been developed by a company in Scotland, who have offered them to us at their cost to build. Each machine is around £5,000 to buy, and we are working towards a number of these to go in our next shipment to Ukraine.

Alternatively, we will use the funds to buy "Superstoves". These too are a UK development and are a small wood burning stove that also generated electricity and pumps hot water around a radiator system. These are around £3,000 each, and the intent is to put one in each cottage we build or re-build, so the home is warm, has lighting independent of the mains and can heat food or water for drinking.

The Ukrainian people are incredibly grateful for whatever assistance they are given. While corruption has been emphasised much in the media, the actual levels of corruption have markedly fallen in the last few years, and very much so under President Zelenskyi’s term in office. This, I have experienced first-hand. Because we are spending most of the money raised here in the UK and are placing these items directly in the hands of the people who will use them, or in the hands of trusted partners already working there, we can be pretty sure none of the funds will be lining any other persons pockets.

Thank you for reading all this, and if you donate, we thank you greatly for that!

If you would like a “Terry the Turtle” sticker, smaller than the one in the photo, or would like to receive an email diary of the trip, please let us know. Donate £3.00 or more for a sticker to be posted to you, a donation of any amount is valid to receive our email trip diary.