Halifax sends aid and love to Ukraine, a nation suffering a nightmare - Christa Ackroyd

The room set aside by a small band of dedicated volunteers was soon full to the brim. Every room in the adjoining house built by a proud man who had fled to this country after the Second World War, was overflowing too. An entire floor at what was once Europe’s biggest mill, Dean Clough, was offered as an alternative. That was also quickly filled. Everyone wanted to help, because so many felt helpless. But that isn’t our way both in Yorkshire and in the Ukrainian community. As the world has witnessed in the Ukraine they don’t give up. They don’t get overwhelmed. And neither did those trying to help them. Quietly and diligently men, women and children, my own granddaughter among them, sat among a mountain of gifts sorting, itemising and packaging, while in the kitchen the cups of tea kept flowing along with the tears. So many tears. The woman whose house it is kept repeating: “There is so much goodness in the world.” She was wearing her national costume. The national dress of the Ukraine. This week the Ukrainian community in and around Halifax, like so many others, asked for aid for their country of origin. Like so many, they were overwhelmed by the response. And they cried, not just for Ukraine and its people, their friends and relatives back home facing the horrors of war, but at the kindness of those they had never met who answered their call. The response was both humbling and uplifting. As one volunteer put it, a young woman who had married into a Ukrainian family: “This shows this country is great. It is a country to be proud of.” It is also a country which so many from Ukraine now call home. What I saw over the past few days at that makeshift collection centre restores my faith in people. I cried many times as the kindness came flooding in. In other rooms of the house people talked on mobile phones to those trapped inside Ukraine, a country that has only known freedom for three decades, a freedom they are fighting once again to preserve. “What do you need?” they asked. To a man and woman they answered “We just need Putin gone. This has to stop.” But how can we help, they were asked again. The answers that came were sometimes shocking. “We need bandages, medical supplies, dressings for our wounded”, they said. “And binoculars to see our enemy.” Theirs calls were answered. They are among the items now sorted and packaged which set off from Halifax yesterday in a huge articulated lorry. But there was much more on board, all of it bundled up with so much love for a people most have never met. Thousands upon thousands of nappies, sleeping bags, tents, six thousand soaps, five thousand hand sanitisers, warm clothes, baby clothes, children’s clothes, toiletries, toothpaste. You name it, it was given. But there were certain items which stopped the band of volunteers in their tracks. One little boy gave his teddy for another little boy to make him feel safe at night. A little girl came with her mummy with a carrier bag of brand new baby dolls which she had bought with her Christmas money. When we opened a package of beautifully hand knitted baby blankets we stopped to read a note, inside which was a £10 note and the message: “It is all I can give. I wish it was more.” That lady will never know the response to her act of generosity. I hope she reads this. Tired and a little overwhelmed, as her note was shared among them, the sorters began sorting with renewed vigour. People who had come with their gifts stayed to volunteer. One elderly gentleman set to work carrying boxes far too heavy for him, but he wanted to continue when he was asked if it wasn’t too much. “Too much!” he exclaimed. “After all they are going through over there. Never.” Another man stood in tears for a few moments before he continued with his duties. “My parents came to this country because it offered them a better life. But they never forgot home,” he said . “I am just glad they are not here to see what is happening. It would have broken their hearts. Just as it has broken mine.” It didn’t break his spirit as he continued with the tasks he had been set for hour after hour. And that is why they queued in the rain in Halifax last week, why children held hands in York and formed a string of blue and yellow ribbons or communities of all faiths came together in cathedrals. Because we want the Ukraine to know we care. That night I couldn’t sleep but this time not just because of the news reports coming out of that shattered land, scarred and decimated by war. Not just because of the countless acts of bravery from those ordinary folk who have stood in front of tanks refusing to let them pass, or the thousands of people who marched through the streets of Russia shouting not in our name, knowing that too would cost them their liberty. I couldn’t sleep because of the selfless kindness of people as witnessed in Halifax and their message of hope for all humanity. As the woman who opened her home in Halifax said, as people across the world who opened their homes to refugees in Poland and elsewhere bear witness to, there is still so much goodness in the world. Slava Ukraini.