Appeal for more Christmas shoeboxes for Ukraine

An appeal has been put out for Christmas shoeboxes to be delivered to Ukraine, with even a bar of chocolate capable of ‘putting a smile on a little face’.

Andreas Evangelou and Maksym Litvinov last month completed their 11th aid mission to the war-hit country, and are already planning their next.

More than 50 shoeboxes were delivered to children in Ukraine last year, and Mr Evangelou wants to collect more this year.

READ MORE: Plymouth's amazing gesture to children in Ukraine this Christmas

READ MORE: Simple 8p hack leaves your microwave sparkling clean in just five minutes

Through a partnership with long-established Ukrainian charity Nadiya, some of the shoeboxes will be delivered to a children’s hospital – Okhmatdyt Children’s Hospital – which was hit by a Russian missile strike earlier this year.

Mr Evangelou said: “I will be taking them to the children’s hospital – they will go through the charity we are working with.

“If anyone wants to make one, just decide on an age bracket, and whether it is a boy or girl, and then put in anything really – it’s all so expensive for the refugees who have lost their homes, everything is so expensive.

“Even if it’s some colouring books even a bar of chocolate and a bag of crisps, it’s stuff that they can’t get in Ukraine anyway.

“They’re not going to get Cadbury’s or a KitKat unless they pay through the nose, because it’s imported, and have they got the money for it? No.

“So a KitKat and a bag of cheese and onion crisps, some crayons and a book would put a lot of joy on to a little face.

“It would cost someone £2, and probably more to wrap it than it would to fill it. It’s the joy of Christmas: A child opening a box and finding something that they wouldn’t find in Ukraine.”

Although tensions have been heightened in Ukraine with American and British missiles fired into Russian territory, Mr Evangelou said that their partnership with the charity would mean that the shoeboxes would get to their destinations either way.

He added: “I will make a decision on the day whether to cross the border, but if I don’t then I know that Nadiya will take them, and deliver them to the children who are stuck outside Kyiv or in Okhmatdyt Children’s Hospital.”

Shoeboxes can be dropped off at Cosmic Kitchen, behind the Magistrates’ Court, or Turners of Roborough on Tavistock Road. Please clearly mark whether the boxes are for a boy or girl, and which age bracket they are meant for.