Gosport brothers thank all who donated six tonnes of aid for Ukraine after 'heartbreaking' delivery

Selfless Ryan Fuller and Paul Bendon loaded up a lorry with a mix of food, sweets, toiletries, medicine, clothes and buggies and drove for 48 hours through mainland Europe to ensure it reached Ukrainian refugees.

Most of the goods came from a campaign by Gosport-based JRC Facilities, while other items came from their colleagues at Facilities by ADF as well as an appeal via social media.

The pair drove to Volovat in Romania where volunteers from the Volovat Pentecostal Church unloaded supplies into smaller vehicles to be taken to Ukraine – as insurance reasons wouldn’t allow for them to enter the country themselves.

For film and TV production technician Ryan, 31, the experience was ‘heartbreaking.’

‘Of course we wanted to do all we could to help,’ he said.

‘But when we started off it seemed like it was quite a fun thing to do – to be driving to Romania.

‘When we got there we realised we were not there to have fun. It is a really serious situation.

‘We were meeting people who had lost their lives – their families and their homes.’

Ryan and Paul spent a few days in Romania, providing hot drinks out of their lorry, which was also supplied brand-new by ADF, and visiting orphanages that were filled with children who had lost their parents.

‘Our trucks are specially fitted for camera crews to work from, so they double as workshops and feature mains power, generators, lighting, plug sockets, racking and air conditioning,’ Ryan said.

‘They also have steps and safety bars to get in and out of.

‘This inadvertently made them excellent for humanitarian purposes. So we decided that once we were done unloading the aid we would then fill the shelves with sweets and take them to refugee camps in the area.

‘A young girl thanked us and asked me if I wanted to see a picture of her dad. She showed me on her phone a photo of her deceased father in a makeshift coffin, with bullet wounds.

‘This was heartbreaking to see that not only will this girl never see her father again, the last thing she has to remember him by is a photo of his body.’

Before leaving they asked all the refugees to autograph their truck.

Ryan said: ‘Because our vehicles are used on film sets it's not uncommon for them to be seen and used by celebrities every day.

‘So we thought it would be a nice idea to raise awareness of what is happening in Ukraine by letting celebrities look at some autographs instead of signing them for a change.’

He added: ‘I would like to kindly ask people to stop giving or sending aid now and rather donate money to the Red Cross. It is far easier for them to use that money to coordinate the direct purchase and logistics of aid rather than process donated goods.’

Ryan is hoping to go back to Romania or Ukraine at some point in the future when his work allows to support more of the orphans.

A message from the Editor, Mark Waldron

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