March 31, 2022 5.00 pm This story is over 24 months old

Former furniture shop transformed into ‘military-scale’ Ukraine charity operation

Over 40 tonnes of donations sent

Lincoln charity worker Derran Brown has spoken to The Lincolnite Podcast about managing a donation drop-off centre in the city.

The former Sofology store on St Marks shopping precinct has been transformed into a hub for donations towards the Ukraine crisis, collecting a plethora of supplies to send to the Poland-Ukraine border.

Set up by his partner Aneta, headteacher at Polish School Lincoln, Derran told The Lincolnite Podcast that so far, they’d managed to send “between thirty and forty tonnes” of donations to the country, and had around twenty tonnes in the unit ready to be sorted and shipped.

Boxes of donations piled high in the former Sofology site

Explaining that the operation ran primarily on volunteers, Derran went on to say that between two and three-hundred people had given some of their own time towards helping the massive effort since they opened the site.

While grateful, Derran has encouraged donations other than clothes!

Derran explained that the donations they need the most changes on a regular basis. While they are overwhelmed with clothing at the moment, the current focus is on medicines and medical supplies.

For more information, head to the Support for Ukraine in Lincolnshire Facebook page.

To listen to the full interview this Friday, subscribe to The Lincolnite Podcast, available on all major streaming platforms.

Find out more: https://thelincolnite.co.uk/podcast/