On February 24, 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine en masse. Shortly afterwards, the Frisian Riders started with aid convoys to Ukraine. “I drove there with my daughter Evelien with a bus full of medicines and relief supplies,” says Harrie Boerhof. “And we brought back refugees from Ukraine.”
Two years later, the Frisian Riders work from all over the Northern Netherlands and Boerhof is now coordinator of the Drenthe relief efforts of the Frisian Riders. “I have found people in various places around Hoogeveen who want to receive items and promote themselves. There is also a club in Bovensmilde that is extremely fanatical.”
Also in Diever a club is working fanatically for Ukrainian families. They fill boxes with relief supplies and knit hats for the cold winter. Ali Schuring is one of the women who started knitting fanatically. “I was immediately enthusiastic and called on Monday to ask what sizes they wanted. It is for babies, but also adults and must be in black, gray or green.”
Twenty women meet monthly in a room of the Kruiskerk in Diever to knit, but most knitting is done at home. “It’s nice that you can do that for someone else. And television is of no use in the evenings these days, so it’s nice that you have a goal.” According to Schuring, it is fun during the monthly mornings, but she hopes that more ladies will join in.
In the meantime, work is continuing at full speed in Haulerwijk. The Ukrainian refugees work on an assembly line, the Dutch volunteers help deliver boxes and remove the waste. Along the side of the hall are stacked old beds from Veenhuizen prison, points out Arnaud Dijkstra of the Friese Rijders Foundation. He indicates that the foundation receives a lot of help, but that money is now the bottleneck.
“Donations of items represent five percent of what we send. We purchase the rest. We now have a budget of 25,000 euros and with that we can send a truck full of items that way about once a week. If we have more money we can We fill eight trucks a week.”
De Friese Rijders started a so-called banana box campaign this winter with a campaign on its website and Facebook page. “We want to send 100,000 filled banana boxes to Ukraine in the coming months, because the need is great this winter,” says Dijkstra. Meanwhile, he shows photos of families with filled banana boxes in a Ukrainian village two kilometers from the front line. “We want to scale up as quickly as possible.”