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Empty Argos store at Castlepoint being used for donations for Ukraine

By Nicole Baddeley @nicole_baddeleyDigital reporter
 

OVERWHELMING amounts of donations for people in Ukraine has led to Bournemouth’s biggest shopping centre offering up a warehouse to kind-hearted volunteers.

It comes just days after organisers from a newly formed group - Help from Bournemouth to Ukraine - set up an appeal for donations.


Yesterday the group, who have been organising donations across Dorset, had to halt collections at their main centre while the warehouse at Castlepoint was secured.

READ MORE: How Dorset residents can help people in Ukraine

Castlepoint management has given the group the use of the old Argos warehouse and shop as a drop-off point and storage facility for all donations.

Karol Swiacki and Castlepoint management securing the Argos donation centre

People with donations can drop them off in the main Argos store - through the blue doors - on the top level of Castlepoint between 9am and 5pm daily.

Karol Swiacki, organiser of Help from Bournemouth to Ukraine, said: “They will give us almost everything, boxes, trolleys - it’s just fantastic.

“They will also support our action with their 20,000 customers - that’s out of this world.”

Thousands of donations have been pouring in from Dorset residents to help people affected by the war in Ukraine.

Daniel Sulimierski, owner of Food Plus - the main collection point in Boscombe, said:

“They are our neighbours we need to help.

“And it’s overwhelming, we didn’t expect this much.”

The group already has three warehouses full of donations and two lorries in Southampton ready to go to Poland.

READ MORE: Ukraine: Bournemouth residents protest Russian invasion

Donations at the Parkstone Delicatessen

Karol said: “We didn’t expect this, what is happening now is just.. Wow.”

Operating the satellite donation point for Daniel and Karol from Ferndown Post Office, Paul Burnett said: “We’ve had to take our consulting room out of use to house donations and we’ve already had a lot in just one morning - they just keep coming.

“The average person in Ukraine has suddenly had this land on them, they’ve all been displaced and they’ve got nothing.

“They’ve gone from a lifestyle like ours to being refugees overnight.

“In this day and age the fact that there can be a war like this, it’s awful.”

Paul Burnett at the Post Office in Ferndown

Another satellite donation point has opened at the Parkstone Delicatessen where a warehouse has been filled with donations that keep on coming.

Krystian Andizejewski from the deli said: “The people of Ukraine are suffering so much and we need to help them.


“If we needed help, they would help us and that’s how it is - especially for the kids.

Lucy Gomm and her daughter India, 8, from Lilliput had spent the morning shopping for baby goods to donate to Ukraine.

Lucy said: “All of those people, especially the children, have had to flee from their homes.

"Having children of my own I find it quite heartbreaking to be honest.

“I think it’s really important for them [children] to realise it’s not that far away and there are things that we can do to help.

“We’ve just been in the shop and I said to Indy, what do you think the children will need - it’s awful, it’s so shocking to think that it can happen now.”