Give a blanket to help someone in Ukraine through the coming winter
Down in the far south-west corner of Ukraine, in the city of Izmail, winter is coming – to a region Russia is trying to cut off from the rest of the country.
Izmail sits between the Danube and the Dniester, right on Ukraine’s border with Romania and Moldova. All year, strikes have targeted the bridges, ports, and supply routes that connect this region to the rest of Ukraine — not to take ground, but to isolate it. Warehouses have been destroyed. Deliveries are delayed for weeks. Shops run short of basic goods. It’s a siege by starvation.
Our partner on the ground, Pastor Yan Hrosu, and his team have kept working through it — feeding people on the streets of Izmail, Reni and Odesa, delivering food parcels to families, and travelling out to villages that almost no one else reaches. Last winter, through their “Cold & Hunger” project, they handed out more than 500 blankets and hundreds of sets of thermal wear to the families who needed them most: households where the father is away fighting, single mothers, families with many children — and the elderly in villages with no shops, no transport, and sometimes only fifty or sixty residents left, five or six of them children. Some months, Yan’s team and a blanket are the only sign anyone remembers those villages are there.
This year, the need for warmth will be greater still. And the closer winter gets, the harder it becomes to help — post offices are struck, deliveries slip by one to three weeks, and once the cold really sets in, the whole country starts buying up blankets and heaters at once, so prices rise and stock runs out. That’s why we’re asking now, in good time for the food delivery we already have scheduled for October.
How you can help
We’re asking for one of three things:
- Send a blanket. A new fleece throw, at least 2m x 2m, will keep someone warm through the coldest nights. Post it to us, and we’ll get it to Izmail as part of our October delivery. The condition of the fleece must be ‘new’.
Feed The Hungry UK, The Halo Centre, Progress Way, Coventry, CV3 2NT
- Give £12. That’s what it costs to buy a good, thick fleece throw to keep someone warm through the coming winter in Ukraine.
Click to donate blankets to Ukraine
- Buy a blanket from our Amazon Wishlist. Order a blanket from our wishlist and have it delivered straight to our warehouse, ready to be sent to Ukraine.
Every blanket goes to a family Yan and his team have chosen carefully, not handed out at random. And if you’re able to give more, anything extra goes straight to the food, firewood, and fuel briquettes; his team is racing to get in place before the temperature drops.
Give a blanket to help someone in Ukraine.