Delivering the first Bookmark Boxes for Ukraine
Tuesday was a special day for the entire team at Bookmark as we delivered the first 30 of 6,500 Bookmark Boxes for Ukraine to Ukrainian child refugees at the New Horizon Centre in Merton thanks to the support of The Association for Polish Family, headed by CEO, Slawek Szczepanski.
Each family was given one of the specially curated boxes to take home and keep forever. Seeing the joy on the children’s faces as they opened the boxes and explored the contents was lovely to witness. There was happiness and smiles across the room as the children played with the toys and puppets, discovered the tablets and read through the Ukrainian books.
We have worked closely with Slawek to bring these boxes to these families, many of whom have arrived in the UK only a few weeks ago. Slawek said;
“The children were so happy receiving the Bookmark Boxes. It was important to us to make the kids smiley, that's what we want to see at the end of the day. For us it might be nothing but for these families it is everything."
Ukrainian children opening their Bookmark Boxes in Merton
Two million children have fled Ukraine already. Thousands of these children are arriving in the UK having left their loved ones, education and home behind. These children now need to start a new life whilst healing from trauma. We hope these boxes will be their own precious treasure chest filled with items to make them feel welcomed and comfortable in their new surrounding, and to build familiarity with the English language.
We spoke to Mykhailo, father of Mark and Stefania, and his wife who arrived in the UK from Kyiv in April. The children started school in Merton two weeks ago. Mykhailo said;
“My children are very happy with the boxes. Mark’s favourite part of the box is the pencil case because he doesn’t have one for school.”
One of our aims of the box was to make sure the Ukrainian children had a starting-school stationery set to make the transition a little easier.
Stefania showing us her new favourite toy from her box
Our visit ended on a high, with hugs being shared and the children skipping out of the room with their boxes filled with entertainment for that evening and the weeks to come.
Slawek said;
'It means a lot to these kids to go back home with something extra. They have no toys, they arrived in Merton with just a backpack. What can a five year old do without any toys? They cannot watch TV if they don't have one, they cannot use the internet without any data, it's so expensive. For us, we can get a SIM card and top it up with £10 but for the Ukrainian families, that is £10 they don't have.'
Vodafone UK have donated 1,000 SIM cards with 20GB of preloaded data. As Slawek says, this will make a huge difference to these families being able to stay in touch with friends and family displaced around the world.
Our urgent appeal doesn’t end here. These are only the first 30 of 6,500 boxes we want to deliver to Ukrainian children arriving in the UK. So far we’re halfway to our £1 million fundraising target. Can you help us support as many Ukrainian children and their families as possible? Please the button below to donate to our appeal and help us build more Bookmark Boxes for Ukrainian child refugees.
