Ukraine

Ukraine donation shop wins over community

Ukraine donation shop wins over community

A Rotary club in South East England was blown away by the support they received for their Ukraine appeal from their local community.

For the past few weeks, The Rotary Club of Canvey Island have had a shop open in their local shopping centre where members of the public could come and donate money and supplies. Th club were subsequently blown away by the sheer amount donated to them during their stay at Knightswick Shopping Centre.

The shop was open seven days a week for three weeks, 9am – 5pm Monday to Saturday and 10am – 4 pm Sundays.

Club President Anne Earl and her husband Ivor worked hard to make sure there was a dedicated team of staff there at all times while working there themselves as well.

Canvey Island Rotary Club President Anne Earl closing the shop.

The volunteers were astounded and often moved to tears with the donations coming in – notably during a visit from the Just Imagine Day Nursery and when a young boy came in offering to donate his birthday money.

As well as members of the Canvey Coast Satellite Club, Canvey Island Rotary also had fifty volunteers from the general public that helped collect, sort and pack donations.

At the end of the second week of collections, the amount of boxes filled with donations was already taking up nearly all the space so a van had to be brought in from Ford Motor Co. to collect some of the items.

The day after the shop closed, Ford Motor Co. returned to help with three vans and an estate car to transport the donated items to Dagenham to be loaded onto pallets and then transported to two locations in Poland.

An estimated total of £150,000 worth of donations was collected by the club with more financial contributions still promised!