Roc Search Ukraine Appeal

The escalation of conflict since Russia invaded Ukraine in February has caused over 2,500 civilian casualties and forced 4.2 million civilians to leave their homes and find refuge in neighbouring countries. Civilians are in desperate need of support and protection provoking The Regional Refugee Response Plan to begin taking action, bringing together the UN, NGO and other partners to aid in finding refuge.

Here at Roc we wanted to play an active role in supporting those affected by the crisis by helping in any way we can. So when an opportunity presented itself, we jumped at the chance. Steve Dinsey, one of our ex-employees and friend of our CEO (Conor Roughneen) is the Managing Director of 500 Logistics Limited. Over the last 8 weeks he has organised and paid for 3 truckloads of aid to be sent over to a warehouse in Poland to support the Ukrainians who are being displaced. He reached out to Conor and Roc Search to see if we could help him with filling a 4th truckload.

Conor has been wanting to organise the sending of aid to help the Ukrainians for a while now, even thinking about getting a van and driving supplies up himself (which he is still thinking of doing). So when Steve reached out, it was the perfect opportunity to show our support. However, we needed to get all the supplies together in the space of 2 days before the truck left for Poland. Luckily as a company we have always had a major focus on charity work, supporting many local charities over the years, and our employees are well-seasoned in mobilising a charity effort. We asked our staff if they could donate supplies, or money for us to go out and buy supplies and, after a few runs to Costco, managed to pull together over £1,500 worth of food and essentials! We are very lucky to have some incredibly generous employees within the business, and everyone pulled together to donate and also help pack all the boxes ready to be shipped out.

After the success of this appeal, Conor is already planning on organising another collection in a few weeks which will be given to Steve on his next run out to Poland. He’s also in a fortunate position to be able to open up two of his apartments to house Ukrainian refugees, and is currently talking to the Reading Ukrainian Centre to organise this. As a business we feel we need to do everything we can to help during this crisis, as we are in a good position to do so. We’d also like to inspire as many other to do the same.

We also want to say a massive thank you to everyone for all of your support with aid and donations to support the people of Ukraine. In such a short timeframe we managed to fill a van full of aid. As mentioned, we will be organising more donations in the future to continue helping with the crisis and will be doing another collection in a few weeks. There will be an update soon on our social media pages for anyone who would like to support.