Like every trip to Ukraine, this fifth trip which started on the 16th January 2023 is a huge logistic team effort and is being undertaken by volunteer driver Joe Kelly Director of Supported Independence (Partner Organisation), volunteer co-driver Craig who works with Joe and Alison Giblett (A Kyiv Aid worker) who is travelling out with us.

The main aim of this trip, like our other four previous trips out to Zolochiv and Lviv in Ukraine, will be to bring over urgently needed generators (this time x7), medical supplies and other winter food and clothing and to bring back UK sponsored Ukrainian refugees, mainly women and children, back to UK for their immediate safety and protection.

This time we will also be bringing out Alison who is not expecting to return from Ukraine until next Christmas.

The trip will take approximately seven days and will involve us co-driving 2750 miles there and back from Bristol to Zolochiv.

A quote from Joe:

It’s really rewarding work and I am really enjoying working with Chris, Colin and the wider Bristol Aid to Ukraine and Love Bristol Team and other NGO staff on the ground out in Ukraine who work tirelessly as one big team to make these trips such a success.

We are glad we set off from Bristol with snow tyres!

The trip back to the UK with our refugee returning passengers will be a lot tougher though emotionally.

Every trip is a unique adventure and privilege as our sponsored refugee passengers struggle and contemplate and try to come to terms with the reality of leaving their homeland, husbands on the front line and all their life memories behind.

To put your trust in others and to come to a temporary place of safety in another country when you do not speak a word of English is a very brave, scary and courageous thing to do.

To try at the same time to come to terms with the loss of your family, your home, your friends, your loved ones, your career and to have these things possibly permanently or at best temporarily out of reach and to be all at sea and in crisis, is simply a living hell!

The three nights and various meals we will have together each day on the way back as we stay in various hostels and drive across Ukraine, Poland, Germany, Holland and back to the UK will be a profoundly moving experience for us ALL.

More donations of money and winter food, generators and medical supplies will enable us to plan more urgent aid trips and to help more people to get through another hard Winter and into Spring!