April 2022, Ukraine

Project Ukraine began on a Bank Holiday Monday at Normandy Cricket Club. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine had forced millions of people to leave their homes, often with little more than they could carry. Like many people watching the crisis unfold, we wanted to do something practical to help.

We partnered with Normandy Cricket Club who, mainly directed by my Dad, organised a fundraising and donation event, and the response from the local community was incredible. People arrived throughout the day carrying essential supplies for those affected by the conflict. Alongside the physical donations, nearly £5,000 was raised to support the mission.

By the end of the event, we had a van filled to the brim with supplies. The next challenge was getting everything to the people who needed it.

Phil Moss (Uncle Mossy) and I volunteered to make the journey. In total, we would spend more than 50 hours driving through seven countries across Europe. It was a long way to travel in a heavily loaded van, but it felt important that the donations were personally delivered rather than simply collected and passed on.

We began by driving to Freiberg, where we stopped overnight before continuing towards the Polish-Ukrainian border. Our destination was Medyka, a small village in southeast Poland which had become one of the main crossing points for Ukrainians fleeing the war.

When we arrived in Medyka, we located the warehouse where the donations were being received and unloaded everything from the van. Supplies were arriving from across Europe and being organised before being distributed to refugees and communities affected by the conflict.

The scale of the international response was one of the things that stayed with us most. Volunteers had travelled from countries all over the world to help, and many were paying for their own transport, accommodation and supplies. People from completely different backgrounds had arrived in the same place for the same reason.

After unloading the donations, we travelled to Jaroslaw, where we joined a team of five ambulance crew members from southwest England, who Uncle Mossy knew from his days in the Police. They were already on their third journey to the region, delivering medical supplies and offering their experience wherever it was needed.

It was humbling to hear about the time and money they had personally committed to helping people they had never met. They were not looking for recognition—they had simply seen people in desperate need and decided to do something about it. We had a few beers in the evening with the guys, and they told us they were driving into a part of Ukraine tomorrow that had just been bombed by Russian Forces.

While we at the Medyka Refugee shelter, Phil registered as a volunteer driver. He spent the day transporting people from the airport and helping them continue their journeys. Many of those arriving had been forced to leave their homes with very little notice and were now trying to reach relatives, temporary accommodation or refugee support centres in unfamiliar countries.

I spent time helping a group of US Army soldiers set up beds for refugees. It was a simple job, but after days of travelling in frightening and uncertain circumstances, having somewhere safe to sleep provided people with at least a small amount of comfort. For some reason, the US Army soldiers decided that I was the one that need to organise the operation, and took direction from me...

It was difficult to fully comprehend what the Ukrainian families we met had experienced. Phil and I knew where we were going, we had passports, money, a van and homes to return to. Even when the journey became tiring or uncomfortable, we knew it was temporary.

The Ukrainians crossing the border had no such certainty. Many did not know when they would return home, whether their homes would still be standing or when they would next see the family members they had left behind.

Mossy summed up the contrast perfectly:

“CJ and I made choices—where we slept, what we ate, where we went and who we met. The Ukrainians have no choice.”

One of the most remarkable people we met was a former military woman who was preparing to cross into Ukraine alone to help rescue people trapped by the fighting. She understood the danger she was walking into and carried a pill that she intended to use to take her own life if she were captured by Russian forces. Hearing this was incredibly sobering. She was risking everything for complete strangers, fully aware that she might never return.

After completing our work, we began the long journey back to England. We stopped overnight in Dortmund before continuing to Brussels and then travelling to Dunkirk, where we caught an early ferry home the following morning.

The return journey gave us plenty of time to reflect on what we had witnessed. We had seen the devastating consequences of war, but we had also seen an extraordinary demonstration of humanity. Volunteers, emergency workers, soldiers, charities and ordinary members of the public had come together from around the world to help complete strangers.

Project Ukraine would not have been possible without the enormous support of our community. We are incredibly grateful to everyone who donated money, essential supplies or their time. Special thanks must go to Dave Jones (Dad) for his exceptional fundraising efforts and to Normandy Cricket Club for helping make the entire project possible.

I am also extremely grateful to Phil Moss. Driving across Europe into an active humanitarian crisis required a huge amount of commitment and courage, and I could not have asked for a better person to make the journey with. Even if he did ask to stop in West Germany to look at a new mower he thought would be great for the outfield at the cricket club...