And here’s the fun part- packing. And all the things that come along with it.

Fun facts, each bag weighs about 11 kilos, and we also do some pre-packing of the items inside so that they survive transport and don’t spill everywhere. This means that for packing, we need teams of people to load/unload, pre-bag items, assemble bags, and then get them ready for transportation to their final destinations.

Along with our huge shipment of care packages out east, we had some allocated for the local community here in Chernivtsi. These items were given mostly to internally displaced persons, and disabled people here.

You don’t realize how much work it takes to assemble 3000 care packages until you start it. With a team of over 30 volunteers supporting us, we set off to work early morning. We managed to assemble 800 by the time we stopped at 7:30 PM. It’s going to take a little while.

Our most “fun” delivery to date. This delivery has been riddled with logistical complications, but we are thrilled that it has FINALLY arrived.

Pictured above are:

7000 packages of pork

3500kg of Sugar

3500L of sunflower oil

500kg of flour

500kg of rice

100L of diesel for our truck to Kharkiv

A week and a half ago, we drove to Turkey to look at our options to purchase supplies from new wholesalers. Today, our fruits of labour arrived :) 22 tons of food and personal hygiene products.

To this point, many of our deliveries made to Ukraine were loads that could be fit inside vans. This was the first load where we needed a truck to bring it into the country.

The Chernivtsi distribution center recently reached out and mentioned that they were running short of grains. And so we (Veronica) started searching for wholesalers in Romania to purchase from.

This rice will be packaged into care bags for families in need and distributed throughout Ukraine to zones under siege.