Update 23rd March - Last night our lovely volunteers loaded 7 tonnes of donations into 4 vans which are now on route to Sublice in Poland. From here they will be distributed into various locations inside Ukraine. Thank you so much to everyone who has donated towards costs and enabled us to continue to help families still inside Ukraine and those who have been displaced.

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Update 8th March

“While we plan our next steps, here is a little insight into where your donations went…

Picture Top Right: Our CEO Matt with our good friend Baska who supported us as a translator while travelling from Krakow to the border. What a treasure she is ❤️ Here they are with Malgorzata and Anna who live locally to the border by Przemysl. They are running a baby tent within the vast ‘market’ style set up of local organisations and volunteers who are providing aid to the thousands of people crossing the border. We partnered with them to help support parents with babies and small infants. They have an impressive stall, with a marquee acting as a warehouse, and there are families pouring in to their stall to collect what they needed. Their set up is extremely well organised and fairly well stocked, yet their eyes light up when they catch sight of the contents of our vans 😍They were delighted with the organisation, care and high quality items we were able to provide.

Picture Bottom Left and Right: Our team and partners working together. As our team unloaded your donations, they were able to see first hand families getting immediate access to essential items. Straight from our vans and into the hands of people in need. ❤️🙏🏼

Picture Middle Right: Our dedicated team spent another day in Poland spending some of the Just Giving funds on food and snacks as requested by the local organisations and volunteers working within the aid tents and stalls in Przemysl 💙💛🇺🇦❤️🤍🇵🇱

Picture Top Left: Our wonderful team on the ground. They are all home safe ❤️ we couldn’t be more grateful to them for taking the time out of work and away from their families to make the trip. Big love to them all 💪🏾❤️ #slavaukraini #westandwithukraine “

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Update Friday 4th March - We are hearing from our friends already on scene at the border that items such as sleeping bags, camping mats, shoes are in desperate need. These items are in low supply in Poland, We will be using these funds to purchase as much as we can from Germany on route to the border. Please donate as much as you can afford to allow us to keep making trips back and forth to purchase these items and get them to the Ukrainian people.

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Over 500,000 people (mostly woman and children) have fled from war torn Ukraine into neighbouring countries seeking safety.

We need your help in raising much needed funds to transport the donations we have collected over to the Polish/Ukraine border in order to be distributed to the families arriving with only the items they can physically carry.

On Friday 4th March, Matt Foster, Founder + CEO of The Parenting Network and Michael Sanders Woods, Managing Director of Solent Sky Services will travel along with local NGO Bridge to Unity and Polish Aid Agency Zintegrowana Służba Ratownicza to the polish/Ukrainian border with the supplies and donations gathered through our appeals.

Just giving funds will be used to travel and purchase items such as liquid paracetamol and instant baby milk whilst we are in Poland and can work responsively to the needs on the ground.

The Portsmouth Baby Bank which is run by The Parenting Network has already helped over 300 local families since we entered into the first lockdown and a further 200 families each Christmas for families living in domestic abuse lodges. Now The Portsmouth Baby Bank is appealing for items to help those families crossing the Polish/Ukraine border seeking help and we need your help in getting these donations to where they need to go.

(photo above: just some of the donations coming in)