AN ENTREPRENEUR from Hartley Wintney who drove to Poland last week to deliver a van full of essential goods collected with the support of small businesses in Hampshire and Dorset has shared his experience.

Kevin Ashley, founder and CEO of learning management system myAko, spoke to the Gazette after returning from Krakow with his co-driver Joe Plank.

In Kevin’s words:

It was amazing to see how a group of people of all ages are pulling together in Krakow to get much needed aid into Ukraine.

The aid centre provides food for refugees and is basically open 24/7 to accept, repackage and label the aid prior to it being sent over the border.

It’s like watching a production line where people who didn’t know each other a few weeks ago, collectively work together to support Ukraine.

Some of them had only arrived in Krakow less than a week ago.

A young university student who is leading this centre has not finished his degree but works around the clock to keep the aid flowing.

During our discussion he mentioned previously Ukraine was a fractured country. What the terrible things Putin is doing, has united Ukraine under their President, to fight as one country.

There is a very strong sense of national pride, which is amazing to experience. A lot of the refugees are no longer in this centre as they have dispersed across Krakow and in some cases moved onto Europe.

They have room for about 30 and at one point they had run out of beds so people had to sleep on the floor.

There were some protests in Krakow, especially questioning why the US and Europe were not enforcing a no fly zone. It wasn’t an angry protest it was a logical argument.

For example, President Biden had said if one American was killed in Ukraine then there would be severe consequences. But 2 reporters were killed but no reaction from the US, people were rightly questioning why? How can we sit back and let Russia commit such atrocities?

We also saw a spontaneous group of what looked like students just stop and start singing to collect monies for Ukraine which was amazing as they were quite good!

It was good to deliver the aid, albeit come away feeling we must do more. We have started collecting our second batch already.