In September last year, Sam and Gary Hunt launched the easyStorage franchise in Leicester and Coventry.

As former police officers, they have witnessed first-hand what it’s like for people to struggle, and hope long term to use the business to create some social good in relation to homelessness and youth. But that’s for the future when their easyStorage business, which is barely six months old, is better established.

Against that background, local appeals for help to get things to now homeless Ukrainian refugees meant that Gary was right in line to offer support.

“These”, he pointed out, “are ordinary people, just like us, whose lives have been turned upside down by war.”

Volunteers in the village of Great Bowden (which neighbours Market Harborough) needed help to move all of the things they had collected to a central collection point. The response to their request for specific things had been phenomenal (so good that eventually they could take no more in).

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Given that the village has a population of around 1000 people, to collect thirteen tons of aid is an amazing venture, and shows just how well people, many from further afield, pulled together to respond to the humanitarian crisis.

Sixty volunteers in all sorted donations into groups of ‘like’ things (like women’s sanitary products, baby food and clothing, blankets etc) and everything was repacked and labelled correctly to ensure smooth distribution at the other end.

With a new business, the easyStorage team couldn’t offer money, but what they do have is control over their own time schedule and a big orange lorry for moving things – exactly what was needed.

Gary will tell you that his efforts were nothing, but partner Sam is quick to point out that he’s being modest. She and we are all proud of him.  Along with his son, Frankie, and a handful of volunteers, they loaded the lorry to the roof, with the first three tons of aid and took them to Newmarket to a central collection point, where their skills in loading, stacking and packing meant that volunteers could maximise the use of space in both the barn and the containers where things were being held ready for a lorry to ship out to Poland for distribution.

Following the initial delivery, a further ten tons of aid that had been collected remained: the organisers secured the offer of palletised transport all the way to Poland.

Last Sunday, Gary and Frankie returned again to help sort out donations, and stack pallets, ready for loading onto the lorry to head to the Polish border with Ukraine on Tuesday.

The organiser, an ex-army officer, was told that the donations would be subject to regulatory issues in France. Wanting to see all aid and donations reach the people whom are in desperate need, he  reached out to local MP, Neil O'Brien OBE, who stepped up to ensure that all was correct to achieve the smooth passage of everything gathered in this momentous effort.

In all, 674 boxes of aid were loaded onto 62 palettes ready for transporting. The charity offered to pay for fuel, but the team saw it as wrong to take it.

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To all 60 volunteers, including Gary and Frankie, well done. We’re proud of you.

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The official Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) Ukraine appeal has now opened and will be matched pound-for-pound by the UK Govt up to £20m, taking the UK’s total support fund to date for Ukraine up to £240m in total.

Details can be found here: https://www.dec.org.uk/appeal/ukraine-humanitarian-appeal