Members of the Rotary Club of Truro Boscawen are sending a generator to Ukraine to help to provide much-needed power for people who are living in areas affected by the war.

Rotary clubs from the UK work with clubs from across the world to support international programmes such as End Polio Now, ShelterBox, and Ukrainian relief, as well as local community projects.

At the end of last year the Rotary of Great Britain and Ireland sent out a newsletter to all UK clubs with an urgent request to provide new or second-hand generators for Ukraine.

“As part of our fund-raising activities we used to cook and sell burgers from a mobile pitch at Truro late night shopping evenings,” said Rotarian Peter Bayly. “We stopped doing this around 10 years and since then the generator that provided our power has been largely redundant.

“After seeing the request in the Ukraine Crisis taskforce newsletter, and then hearing up to the minute information from the leader of the Ukraine Crisis team and other Ukranian Rotarian colleagues via a peace team zoom meeting earlier this month, it was agreed to try and send our generator to Ukraine.”

 After arranging for the generator to be serviced, generously carried out free of charge by garden machinery company Di Mar of Penryn, the Boscawen club began looking at ways of transporting it to Ukraine.

 “Details of both Rotarian and non-Rotarian contacts who could help with the logistics of transporting the generator to Ukraine were included in the original Rotary newsletter,“ said Peter.

“One of these contacts was Lorraine Staniek, who lives near Cheltenham”.

A quick phone call to Rotarian Lorraine established that she had personal links to a town in Poland, some three hours drive from Lviv and, thanks to an arrangement with a Polish transport company working into Ukraine, was regularly sending lorries full of much needed aid and equipment from a collecting centre she had set up in Gloucestershire.

Using a mix of Boscawen club meetings, and website and Facebook posts, the club identified local Rotarian Andrew Parker who is due to drive to Cheltenham at the beginning of February and can deliver the generator to Lorraine.

Once in Ukraine the generator will be delivered to the Ukrainian Crisis team leader who will then arrange for it to be transported to a local community in desperate need of help.

“One of Rotary’s great strengths has always been its worldwide spread and international co-operation,“ said Peter. “We are delighted that we have been able to work with Rotarian colleagues, both in the UK and across Europe, to support people in Ukraine”.