North Walsham businessman to drive van of supplies to Ukrainian border
It comes after Norfolk County Councillor Ed Maxfield suggested taking supplies over to the war-torn country, just over two days ago
Last updated 3rd Mar 2022
The owner of a café in North Walsham is planning to drive a van full of food, blankets and sanitary products over to the Ukrainian border next week.
Rob Scammell is currently accepting donations at Cafe Kitale in St Nicholas Court.
It all comes after Norfolk County Councillor Ed Maxfield suggested taking supplies over to the war-torn country, just over two days ago.
Mr Scammell told us he just couldn't sit back and do nothing: "It feels like it's more on our doorstep, it feels like one of our neighbours has been invaded. We can all see it on TV, it's heart-breaking what's going on and we just felt we wanted to do something. On the global scale, what we are doing is pretty small but it makes the community feel good and gets people thinking".
He went on to say that people have been incredibly generous across Norfolk: "The items we've been asked to collect are canned food, nappies, sanitary products and blankets. The response has been overwhelming, yesterday we got over 80 phone calls and over 50 donations.
"An old lady who literally couldn't carry stuff to us came over to us and handed over ÂŁ20 and said 'could we do anything with that'. We've also had hundreds of pounds donated as well, which we'll use to buy stuff in bulk.
"Across Norfolk at the moment we've got Norwich, we've got someone on their way from Norwich at the moment from Hethersett School- who has got quite a lot for us. We've got people from Yarmouth and King's Lynn as well.
"We've also been contacted from people in Scotland, who want to go in convoy with us and try and fill their own van from where they live. It's snowballing, it's incredible".
He concluded by saying that the whole situation remains somewhat surreal: "It's just tragic, the west warned this was going to happen and nobody thought that Russia were going to over-step that line. Even Ukraine, I don't think they seriously thought it was going to happen.
"It's just seems like madness, absolute madness. The pretence of the war that Ukraine was a threat to Russia everyone knows is absolute nonsense".