Scottish charity delivers pizzas and hope to bombed out communities of Ukraine
Siobhan’s Trust (now HopeFull) uses lorries with ovens to travel the war-torn country and last month produced its millionth pizza
A small Scottish charity that delivers pizzas to the bombed villages of Ukraine has expanded to become one of the most important aid organisations in the country.
Siobhan’s Trust, which began cooking pizzas at the outset of the war, for refugees fleeing across the Polish border, now has ten vehicles criss-crossing Ukraine in two convoys, supplying abandoned areas with a unique blend of food, drink and Scottish eccentricity.
Dressed in kilts, made from a specially designed Ukrainian tartan, the Trust’s volunteers have now visited most of the ravaged parts of the country, including Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia, Bucha and Kherson, reaching towns and small villages that other aid organisations rarely see. Last month they handed out their millionth pizza to a crowd of more than 4,000 people.
Ukrainians queue up at the adapted lorries
In Kherson last year they came under artillery fire – Russian guns were barely two kilometres away, the closest they have been to the conflict. Despite that, this week they were back in the same area. I was with them as they drew a crowd of more than 400 local people, clustered round the Trust’s lorries beneath trees just off the main road into Kherson.
“The trust has done wonders for the morale of this war-torn country,” said one Ukrainian MP. “They tell the people they meet that Ukraine has not been forgotten.”
Last week, four of the trust’s trucks, which contain specially adapted pizza ovens and refrigerated food, drove from Odessa on the Black Sea to the disputed territory outside Kherson, taken back from the Russians last November. We could hear artillery fire from Russian guns barely 20km away, and on the skyline plumes of smoke reminded us how close we were to the reality of war.
The trust liaises in advance with local police to ensure they are not exposing local people to danger. Within minutes of the lorries arriving, word of our arrival had spread around the villages, and soon we were surrounded by excited residents, delighted to have the opportunity, briefly, to escape the pressures of war.
Many of the trust volunteers — now drawn from all over the world — wear kilts made from a specially designed Ukraine tartan
They watched as the volunteers cooked pizzas and queued patiently for the kind of food they have not seen in months. Names were exchanged, hands shaken, greetings given in fractured English. “Dyakuyu Shotlandiya!” (”Thank you, Scotland”) was the phrase we heard most often.
When the Russians retreated from this area last November, they smashed almost every house along the route, drove their tanks through barns and cowsheds, and left the inhabitants traumatised.
Among those who came to collect a pizza on Tuesday afternoon was Lida, an 80-year-old woman whose granddaughter is in the Ukrainian army, fighting on the front at Bakhmut. Lida recalled the day the Russians came to her village.
“I was going to get bread when these Russian soldiers came into my back yard,” she said. “One of them pointed a machine gun at me. I said, ‘What are you going to do? Are you going to shoot me?’ I told him that in World War Two my grandfather had marched with Russian troops from Kherson to Berlin, and maybe his grandfather had marched alongside him. Then we were allies. ‘So now, you are going to shoot me, is that it?’”
The trust has now made and delivered more than a million pizzas in Ukraine
The soldier, clearly embarrassed, turned away and told her to move on. But in the next-door yard two other Russians began beating an elderly man, Lida’s neighbour, leaving him unconscious on the ground.
“What kind of people are these?” asked Lida. “If I were 18 not 80, I would be fighting alongside my granddaughter in Bakhmut.”
For Lida, and many of those in the crowd, those were days of horror. Now, however, they warmed to the sight of friendly Scottish faces, and the smell of freshly cooked pizzas. “We don’t get much chance of coming together and meeting each other,” said one young girl. “This is a day when we can forget the war.”
Siobhan’s Trust was set up originally as a small family charity in memory of Siobhan Dundee, the much-loved wife of Alexander, the Earl of Dundee, who died aged 63. Originally intended to help inner city projects in Dundee, its operations were switched to Ukraine last March when war broke out. Dundee was there on Tuesday, handing out pizzas, along with his nephew David Fox-Pitt, who was instrumental in setting up the trust.
David Fox-Pitt, who helped set up the charity, said their work was about “offering hope”
“This is as much about offering hope to the people we meet as giving them pizzas,” said Fox-Pitt.
The trust now draws volunteers from all over the world. In Kherson this week, they included helpers from Nashville, Tennessee, France, Warsaw, England, and, of course, Scotland.
Oleksiy Goncharenko, a Ukrainian MP and member of the Council of Europe, said the charity had been helping Ukrainians since the early days of the invasion. “Their contributions go beyond just delivering pizza; they represent a symbol of solidarity and collaboration between our nations,” he said.
As to the future, the trust, which raises funds for its operations from across the world, is determined to stay in Ukraine as long as it is needed.
“You can see for yourself how important it is to keep trust with the people of Ukraine,” said Fox-Pitt. “We are here for the duration.”
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