Yorkshire Aid Convoy: 'We delivered supplies to Kyiv and this is the reality of life in a Ukraine conflict zone'
There are few words that can convey the unimaginable threat and devastation when the place you call home becomes part of a war zone. But in Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine, four come close.
‘Have a silent night’ has, for many of the city’s residents, become a default bedtime greeting. There’s sincere hope and well-wishes when those words are uttered – hope for no air raids and no attacks, hope for no bombs, and hope for a restful and uninterrupted silent night’s sleep.
For Rhys Durkin, it is a powerful embodiment of the reality of life amid ongoing conflict – and a reminder that those affected are ordinary people. It is why the 24-year-old from Leeds has chosen Silent Night as the title of a new documentary bringing to the fore the impact of the war.
The film follows the journey of Yorkshire Aid Convoy when volunteers from the charity travelled on a humanitarian aid mission to Ukraine in March 2024. “I wanted to show a different perspective on the war,” says Rhys, owner of Norde Polar Media and director of the film. “I think a lot of the documentaries and news broadcasts focus more on the frontline.
"This documentary focuses more on the effects of the war and how civilians are coping. It also shows what unpaid volunteers can do if they put their mind to it, with a bit of organisation and backing from donors, what ordinary people can do for other ordinary people.”
That’s exactly how Gary Dooley, a trustee of Yorkshire Aid Convoy, sees the charity’s work. “We’re Yorkshire folk that are happy to help anywhere that needs help,” he says.
The organisation was founded in 2002 with the objective of collecting, transporting and distributing humanitarian aid to where it is needed. It was set up after its founders witnessed abject poverty in Romania and Ukraine and began collecting essentials with the help of donors and corporate sponsors.
Largely, the charity is about helping the elderly and the very young, explains 50-year-old Gary, who has been involved for 15 years. Volunteers spend time finding out the wants and needs of people with very little and then use their contacts throughout Yorkshire and the UK to pull together a convoy of aid.
They then hand-deliver donations, taking eight to ten trucks of supplies during visits overseas. Their next scheduled trip is planned for March and this time will also involve a DIY SOS-style makeover of a struggling care home.
Over the last few years, the Leeds-based charity has been working with Reusing IT to provide refurbished computers to help children with their education. Gary says: “Something like 4,000 schools have been destroyed during the war (in Ukraine) - I think they’re calling these kids the lost generation because they’re living under air raids, not going to school, trying to get by…
"At Christmas, we went with a convoy and in the six months since we’d sent computers to an orphanage, the kids there had learnt enough English to put on a nativity for us. It was amazing. Six months earlier they didn’t speak a word of English and there they were singing Christmas songs in English and putting on a whole display.”
The charity’s visits to Ukraine are typically to the West of the country, where there are millions of displaced people who fled from the East with just a handful of belongings. But in March last year, volunteers were invited to Kyiv for an official reception from the Ministry of Education.
It was a difficult decision to go, Gary says, “because you can’t guarantee safety”. There was much further to travel once inside Ukraine and the route was far from straightforward, with checkpoints and police escorts. Rhys accompanied the group, capturing footage of the people they met and places they experienced.
"Kyiv’ is beautiful and has got a lot of rich history and when we arrived, there was no air raid happening and people were going about their every day lives,” recalls Gary, who lives in Harrogate. “But you’d turn a corner and there’d be a street of devastation where a bomb had hit. Some streets would have burnt out tanks left over from the initial Russian invasion. Every other street would have some sort of visible sign of the war.”
“You’d be driving through a village and every house would have bullet wounds in it,” he continues. “There’s kids’ high chairs in the gardens of burnt out houses that have been hit by missiles. It’s hard to process.”
Each day, there were three or four air raids. The first they experienced was within ten minutes of them checking into their hotel on arrival in Kyiv. “We literally had to drop our bags and go down to the bunkers so that was quite an eye-opener.”
When an alert goes off, air raid sirens sound on the street and notifications ping to an app on mobile phones. People are now so used to receiving them that they know exactly how long they have to take cover depending on the type of alert. “If it’s a ballistic missile people just drop and run because they know they’ve got about a minute to get safe,” Gary says.
He hopes that the more people who see the documentary, the more understanding they will have about what life is like for many in Ukraine.
“And they’ll see there is a place in Yorkshire that they can contact and actually make a difference to these people themselves...It puts a face to an organisation which is taking stuff into a warzone and directly helping people...And a small charity can make a difference.”
- A private screening of Silent Night was held last month in Harrogate and Rhys says he is now in talks with a TV channel and streaming service about running the documentary. It can currently be seen on the Norde Polar Films Youtube Channel at youtube.com/@Nordepolarfilms