Since the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, Prosperity, the Ukrainian restaurant in Twickenham, has changed its purpose and become a centre for donations of humanitarian aid.  This small restaurant has become a big voluntary operation, receiving donations from the public, sorting and packing them and then sending them directly into Ukraine to people in need.

Donations come in daily. School minibuses arrive filled with sleeping bags and medicines; cars pull up packed with toiletries collected from whole streets or workplaces; mothers stop to drop off packets of nappies; elderly local residents pause to unload tins of food from their shopping-bags-on-wheels and delivery drivers carry in crates of dried foods bought directly to donate.  The giving has been from all sorts of people, both local and from much further afield. One of the volunteers told me, “it’s wonderful to see so many people giving so much, either of their time, donations or money to help fund the petrol for the lorries”.

Volunteers at Prosperity are a diverse group, across ages and backgrounds, brought together because they each wanted to do something to help.  The restaurant is owned by Ukrainians, Galyna Kosyn’ka and Oleksandr Yarema, and the volunteers are mainly from Ukraine and the UK.  All of the Ukrainians helping at Prosperity have family and friends still in Ukraine, this adds to the atmosphere of focus and purpose.  At the busiest times, up to 30 volunteers help each day, some are there most days, some give a couple of hours when they can.  

The donated items are sorted, boxed, labelled in both English and Ukrainian and then loaded into vans by ‘human chains’ of volunteers, usually daily. At another location, the piles of boxes from the vans are loaded onto huge lorries, whose brave drivers deliver directly to Kyiv, Lviv and other places in Ukraine. Alina Lutf, one of the Ukrainian coordinators at Prosperity said, “When I saw the video of our donations arriving in Ukraine, I could cry”.  During the first month of the war, 35 lorries delivered 650 tons of humanitarian aid from Prosperity in Twickenham and they are just hoping people continue to donate so that they can continue sending the lorries.