Partnership Spotlight: how Lifeline Ukraine has created a logistics network to send humanitarian aid directly to those most in need in Ukraine in 1 week
People for People matches people and foundations in need with companies that can fulfill these needs. We enable organizations such as Movement On The Ground, Takecarebnb, OpenEmbassy, FastLaneUkraine, On My Way UA, the Netherlands for Ukraine, and Lifeline Ukraine to increase their impact.
This week’s partner spotlight is Lifeline Ukraine. We had a chat with Jeroen Ketting, founder of this organization, who decided to suspend his business and work full time to help Ukraine.
Jeroen is Dutch but has a business partner Andrey from Mykolayiv (Ukraine), so the war came to him from a close circle. Using all their logistics connections in Ukraine, Jeroen and his partners are doing the impossible: they are delivering a humanitarian aid truck from Europe to the war zone in Ukraine in just one week! Since the beginning of the war, they have already delivered 13 trucks from Haafte to Lviv, to warzones in Mykolaiv, Sumi, Chernihiv, Dnipro and Zaporizhzhia. And they are planning on doing more, their goal is to bring 43 trucks in totaal by the end of the year, so they still have to send another 30 trucks of humanitarian goods to Ukraine!
Moreover, Jeroen sold his boat and donated his own money to buy humanitarian aid and save lives. He also fundraised money among his friends and got €450,000 to help Ukraine.
They have delivered 1.7 mln € in goods. Since they start 9 weeks ago Lifeline’s team made sure 1,500 babies got the care they need every week (e.g. 82.000 portions of baby food, 36.000 diapers and 54.000 baby wipes), they enabled 2,300 people to get the food they need every week (e.g.flower for 56,000 loafs of bread, powder to make 28,000 liters of milk, 4,500 portions of canned vegetables) and 200.000 people were supported in their basic medical needs for 3 months by providing Interagency Emergency Health Kits (IEHK’s).
LifeLine Ukraine has zero overhead, 2 full time volunteers (Andrey and Jeoren do this pro bono) and no employees, 38 volunteers in Europe, and 100 volunteers, who work with them locally in Ukraine.
With our (People for People) strategic partnership, our aim is to help them fill their weekly trucks with demand-driven, relevant humanitarian aid goods. For example we are shipping 78.000 meals of pasta (10 pallets) in collaboration with Pastaficio and 12 pallets of chocolate thanks to Tony’s Chocolonely. However we still have another 29 trucks to fill!
About People for People
People for People Foundation is a growing entrepreneurial movement joining forces to get as many people affected by the Ukrainian war to safety as possible. We match people and foundations in need with companies that can fulfill these needs. We enable organizations such as Movement On The Ground, Takecarebnb, OpenEmbassy, FastLaneUkraine, On My Way UA, Netherlands for Ukraine and Lifeline Ukraine to increase their impact.
To maximize the positive impact of our initiative, foundation 'Stichting People for People' was founded by Joris Beckers (Picnic), Robert Vis (Messagebird) and Ali Niknam (bunq). Pieter Jan Krevel and Jesse van der Meulen (Aimforthemoon) have been appointed as co-directors of the foundation. A team of 50+ volunteers have joined the organization so far to support our mission.
After already receiving thousands of requests for help, we continuously identify the most urgent issues to help people and foundations in Ukraine, neighboring countries and those who arrive in the Netherlands.