On February 24, the day Anna Demchenko's home country was attacked, her phone did not stand still for a minute. Family members and friends in Ukraine described the situation on the ground to her, colleagues from Ingolstadt and Neckarsulm asked how they could help. At the same time, the sales employee was busy bringing her sister and her sister's two small children home from the war zone.
Von der E-Mail zum Lkw-Transport
Anna Demchenko wrote down in an e-mail which donations in kind were needed in Ukraine and asked her sales colleague Jasmin Wehling to pass the message on among her colleagues. What the two had not expected: Within a very short time, their e-mail spread rapidly and triggered a huge wave of willingness to help at the Ingolstadt and Neckarsulm sites. A team of volunteers spontaneously formed to coordinate the donations in kind, organize temporary storage space and label boxes. The first result of the action: two trucks full of relief supplies, which immediately set off for the Polish-Ukrainian border. There, the helpers handed over the valuable cargo to the Round Table donation distribution center, a non-profit organization with whose offshoot, Serviceclub Round Table 96 Ingolstadt, Audi has been working for years.
There with aid supplies, back with refugees
Some of the donations in kind also went on tour to Ukraine with the jetzt1zeichen.de initiative launched by Audi employee Christian Brinkmann. Audi provided a total of 13 vehicles for the campaigns, which were carried out in cooperation with Malteser Hilfswerk. Over two weekends, volunteer drivers brought the aid supplies to the Polish-Ukrainian border. After loading and a few hours of sleep, the helpers took a total of 69 refugees with them on the way back. They took the women, children and, in some cases, young people traveling alone to relatives and collection points thanks to the cooperation with Malteser Hilfswerk in Germany. "Mothers who turn their gaze to the future to save their children, children who don't speak a word due to exhaustion and tension - these are images we will never forget," says initiator Brinkmann.