The kindness of strangers for the people of Ukraine

Can you answer these quiz questions? In 1876 Alexander Graham Bell was granted a patent for what? How many countries share a land border with Ukraine? And which movie has the famous line, “You can’t handle the truth?” The answers, as you may know, are that Bell invented the telephone; seven countries have borders with Ukraine, and the Hollywood movie is A Few Good Men.

I’ve been asking questions like this over the past couple of days in a charity quiz organised by a friend who runs a local hotel. The idea is that people pay £20 each to enter in teams of six. They have a modest supper (chicken, coleslaw, French fries) and the winners of the quiz receive either a free meal or a small cash prize. But all the entrance fee money, and anything else we collect, goes to the Disasters Emergency Committee.

The DEC is a group of 15 prominent charities including the Red Cross, Christian Aid, Oxfam, Islamic Relief Worldwide, Save the Children and others. It has raised £200 million so far, including £25 million from the British government, the rest from donations and small fundraising events like ours. We managed to raise £3500 in two hours, which doesn’t sound like much – just a small stream flowing in to a big ocean of need, but the very idea of charity touches the human soul. It helps those suffering from the Ukraine conflict and it also makes those of us who collect the money feel we are doing something useful.

A local pet shop has organised collections of clothes, blankets, hygiene products and other materials, sending a truck load to the Polish-Ukraine border. Schools, youth groups, religious organisations are all doing something too. Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Sikhism, Hinduism and other religions recognise that giving is an essential part of faith. The benefits are for those who give as well as those who receive.

When floods, famines, wars and other disasters strike, the act of giving allows donors to feel a sense of what psychologists call “agency” – being able to change just a little part of the world for the better. It therefore helps us overcome the sense of helplessness we all feel when confronted by a human-made or natural calamity. Former German chancellor Angela Merkel put this idea well when during the Syrian refugee crisis, she told Germans: “Wir schaffen das,” meaning “we make it work” or “we can do it".

Discussing with the quiz organisers what we should do with the money has also been an education, one far more profound than the facts of the general knowledge questions in the quiz itself. We have all been forced to look beyond the daily news of atrocities of war and into the mechanics of aiding the human victims. What is needed? Where? And what is realistically achievable?

Out of 41 million Ukraine citizens, some 18 million are predicted to be displaced either within Ukraine or forced out of their country. Around 4 million have already been forced from their homes. In eastern and central Europe an army of civilian volunteers has begun to help.

One friend – a musician in Berlin – volunteered with many others to help resettle Ukrainian families in the German capital and beyond. The refugees, who my friend has seen, are mostly women and children but also some old and frail people. She told me that in one day 13,000 arrived at the Hauptbahnhof, Berlin’s main train station.

Dealing with the trauma of thousands of refugees in an unrelenting stream has taken a toll on the mental health of the volunteers. Most are physically exhausted and emotionally drained. Then a Polish friend told me of up to 2 million refugees (at the latest estimate) arriving in Poland, although many are in transit through Poland to other countries.

One Polish charity is helping in neighbouring Moldova, the poorest country in Europe, with a population of just 2.5 million. Moldova now has more than 250,000 refugees, and numbers are rising there too.

For most nations the prospect of a 10 per cent increase in population in one month would be profoundly unsettling, almost unimaginable. In the UK it would be like dealing with the arrival of 6.8 million people. My Polish friend tells me that refugees say what Ukraine needs now includes help to end the serious shortages of medical equipment, tourniquets, bandages, pharmaceuticals and protective flak jackets.

The flak jackets are needed by nurses and paramedics, medical and aid workers because they themselves have been targeted and killed. The British appeal suggests £30 provides toiletries and hygiene supplies for three people for a month; £50 provides blankets for four families and £100 is enough for emergency food rations for two families for a month. Our little fundraiser cannot stop the war, or end the suffering, but because we cannot do everything, it does not mean that we should stand by and do nothing. Wir schaffen das.