The crisis in Ukraine has touched all of our lives in one way or another. With so many forced to flee their homes, we often take for granted the privileges we have in our country and in our day to day lives. With this in mind, Merit was fully on board with supporting in any way we could and went beyond any traditional donation initiatives, such as contributions at drop-off points and monetary donations.
Merit reached out to a Polish charity, who are working hard to distribute aid directly into Ukraine. We therefore decided to go the extra mile and fill a van with emergency supplies and drive this van to Poland where we delivered it directly to the charity.
We asked for volunteers to drive the van to Poland. Two of our factory staff, Rob and Anthony, were more than willing to do so. When asked why they volunteered to drive to Poland, they responded:
Rob: “I thought if Tony was willing to spend the money and the rest of the company donated the aid, the least I could do was deliver it.”
Anthony: “It was the least I could do when you see the horrific scenes in which the Ukrainian families are enduring. The amount of support has been overwhelming.”
In total, we sent around £4,000 worth of supplies to Ukraine which is incredible. A special thanks to DFDS Seaways for supporting our staff’s journey to Amsterdam and back, providing a free ticket to Amsterdam and half-price ticket back to England in support of our initiatives. We also want to extend a special thank you to all of our staff and their families who have supported, donated and contributed, and also to our subcontractors from BD Structures, Modular Wiring, Troax, Eurocoils and Louietex for their contributions and donations to the aid.
Merit also completed a second trip and this time Tom and Darren from our team volunteered to drive to Poland.
Tom said “I started with Merit in November 2015 as a Junior Fabrication Facility Engineer which after 9 months was moved to working on-sites as a Quality Assurance Officer and then into the operations side of project management. My journey has been both enjoyable and knowledgeable, it is great to work in different projects that do different things and been able to see both a
cleanroom environment and an industrial environment. I had to volunteer, with the horrible things that are going on right now it was the least I could do. An amazing turnover of donations from everyone at Merit and their suppliers and I would happily do it again.”
Darren also said “Coming from a mechanical design engineering and oil and gas background, I started working for Merit in June 2020 as a Lead Design Coordinator in the BIM team. The role of coordinating a multi-disciplinary team in producing our BIM deliverables which include a fully federated 3D model of the project, system general assemblies, layouts, individual PAM fabrication drawings and part schedules to name a few, is very interesting, very fast-paced and although sometimes stressful, it’s a role a really enjoy. My journey with Merit has really only just begun, and I am looking forward to growing with Merit and being part of the exciting times ahead! I just really wanted to help in some small way, after seeing the scenes of devastation in Ukraine and the plight of the refugees on TV! What these people are being forced to live through is abhorrent, so hopefully the contribution of Merit, its staff and friends will make someone’s life a little bit more bearable during this horrific time in their lives. The fact that the journey was relatively short, only a 12-hour drive from arrival in the Netherlands really highlighted how close to
home this really is!
Thanks again to our staff, our staff’s friends and families, to SDL Interiors Ltd, TripleAir Technology BV, Roger Bullivant Limited, Prudhoe Golf Club, Blyth Golf Club), APSF, Pauline Johnstone, Advanced Lighting Technologies, Stancold Plc, Armourpost Service and Micronclean for their contributions and donations.
