Aid alliance makes Christmas gift appeal for Ukraine

IRN: You have an appeal to make for your annual initiative coming up for Christmas. Can you tell us about that
Jeremy Fish: For the 4th year in a row, we’re running a campaign to give Ukrainian children a Christmas. These are displaced children along the front line or children in orphanages that have been through hardships and suffered because of the war.

We are asking people to donate a gift for a child, send it to us and then we are going to dispatch all those gifts across to Lviv on the 10th of December and those gifts will be distributed by 69 Rotary International clubs across Ukraine, all up and down the front line.

IRN: So, where do companies send gifts, and what’s the deadline?
Jeremy Fish: It’s very simple. All they need to do is to get some gifts - you might ask your employees to get some gifts or buy some. Ideally wrap them, but they don’t have to be wrapped. If you do wrap them, put a label on the gift saying what the gift is, whether it’s for a boy or girl, and the age range.

Alternatively, just send it unwrapped to the Plant & Hire Aid Alliance, care of Ardent High Solutions in Felixstowe Rd, Ipswich. The full address is on our website and please do that before the end of November. If it’s going to be unwrapped, then it needs to be before the 21 November.

We will use commercial articulated trucks that will go to a warehouse in Lviv where then Ukrainian Rotary volunteers will distribute them.

IRN: You’ve seen the impact that these gifts and deliveries can have?
Jeremy Fish: The impact is wonderful, right? I mean, it really is. We get hundreds and hundreds of photographs and messages of support and thanks.

Seeing the joy on childrens’ faces as they open those presents gives parents a huge amount of comfort at this hugely difficult time.

IRN: I guess you’re keen for the rental industry to remain committed to helping as much as it can?
Jeremy Fish: Well, we are desperate for the rental industry to step up and to support this initiative. We mustn’t forget these people.

The war is not so much in the news these days, but the death, the destruction, the weariness, the hardship that’s been caused for millions of people, it’s not going away.

So, we mustn’t give up. We must support these people and it’s a fantastic opportunity for the rental industry to step up and do something really good again this year.

More information:

The address to send gifts to is:

The Plant and Hire Aid Alliance
c/o Ardent Hire Solutions
289–297 Felixstowe Road
Ipswich, Suffolk
IP3 9BS
UK

For more information, visits the aid alliance website.