School helps replace ambulance wrecked in Ukraine

A group of school children has raised £1,000 to help fund an ambulance to replace one destroyed during shelling in Ukraine.
The vehicle has been filled with medical supplies by a group in Towcester, Northamptonshire, and driven into the country.
Pupils from Thomas Becket Catholic School (TBCS) in Northampton staged assemblies for each year group, organised a non-uniform day and sold sweets and trinkets to raise the money.
The ambulance arrived safely in Lviv on Tuesday.
More than three years on from the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russian forces. members of the St Vincent Paul (SVP) group at the school wanted to do something to help because they were worried people had started to forget about the conflict.
"It was about a year and a half ago when we first started thinking about it," said Jack from the SVP group.
"People were just not thinking about [the war] any more and we realised we needed to be raising awareness about it."
A fundraising drive began and soon hundreds of pounds was raised for a school in Ukraine.

Summer from the SVP group said: "We're a secondary school - we can relate to what the youth go through.
"We have so many opportunities [at TBCS] and we don't realise how lucky we are so we wanted to raise money for them because every kid deserves the opportunity to do what we do here."

The group met Steve Challen, a volunteer from St Lawrence Church in Towcester, when they were deciding on the best way to help Ukraine, and he told them about the ambulance.
Mr Challen said: "When I showed them this video we'd received of an ambulance that had been damaged in some shelling, they wanted to do more and help with the ambulance fundraising."

The group organised assemblies to let the whole school know about the lost vehicle, and another massive fundraising campaign began.
Becky from the group said: "We had stalls at break and lunch, we were selling raffle tickets and sweets and cupcakes.
"We had some bracelets and keyrings as well that were for Ukraine and, with our mufti day, everyone wore yellow and blue to show solidarity with Ukraine."

Before long, another £1,000 had been raised and the replacement ambulance headed to Ukraine.
Mr Challen said: "They were just so professionally well organised, it was absolutely incredible.
"If only other schools would come on board and do something similar."

After a battle with border guards over paperwork, the ambulance crossed the border on Tuesday and was handed over to a local contact.
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