RE:ACT Partnership Delivers Vital Family Food Packs to Hard to Reach Regions Inside Russian-held Territory

The conflict in Ukraine, now in its sixth month, is having a devastating effect on the country’s population, with hundreds of thousands of people cut off from vital supplies and experiencing serious food shortages. RE:ACT has been working hard to deliver essential food supplies to people in the hardest to reach regions, even managing to supply some towns and cities inside Russian-occupied territory.

For the past five months, RE:ACT have been providing aid to those affected by the conflict.  As part of our response, our volunteers have been working in Poland alongside a local charity, the Ukrainian Education Platform (UEP), to provide vital food packs to families rapidly running out of food.

Each food pack can feed a family of four for a week and contains items like pasta, grains, tinned fish, and tea bags, all of which are locally sourced. The packs are assembled in a warehouse close to the border between Poland and Ukraine, before being transported across the frontier and driven many hundreds of miles to the southeast to be distributed to those most in need. The boxes are compact, enabling them to be moved in smaller vehicles less likely to attract the attention of the Russian troops.

Since the start of our deployment, we have produced over 5,000 food packs, with 2,000 of these being distributed in July alone. The below map shows where we have distributed food packs to date, including Russian-occupied cities Prymorsk and Berdyansk (shown in red), which until recently have been inaccessible, even by the UN.

David Harrington, RE:ACT Responder and the Strategic Liaison Officer on this operation commented on the success of reaching these areas, saying:

“The volunteers with UEP have succeeded at delivering critical aid into areas that the UN and the larger NGOs have on the whole found too challenging. The agility and courage of those working with UEP has been remarkable. The individuals and families in these occupied areas are in some of the most desperate situations out of all within Ukraine, so RE:ACT's and UEP's Family Food Pack initiative really has succeeded in getting aid to those who need it most, who are also in the most challenging to reach and dangerous areas.”

This is a huge breakthrough in the delivery of humanitarian aid in response to the war in Ukraine and truly reflects RE:ACT’s mission to help those affected by disaster, even in the hardest-to-reach places.

During July, civilians from towns and villages in the Zaporizhian region received their first food packs from RE:ACT, many bringing with them wheelbarrows or push bikes to transport the supplies back to their homes. The need for support is highlighted by the large number of people gathering to receive their food parcels and it is clear the need is unlikely to lessen anytime soon.