Amorebieta. March 15, 2022. Four tons of humanitarian aid for Ukrainian refugees left Bilbao last Thursday for the Polish border, thanks to an initiative that has brought together several associations, companies and neighbors, in which Aludium and several of its workers have put their grain of sand.
The shipment, which includes food, clothing, blankets, hygiene items and other basic necessities, is the result of a sum of contributions in which Aludium has provided the coordination of the shipment, the logistics of the transport and its costs, one of the main obstacles that arose.
The first link in the chain of solidarity began when the Basque Slavic Cultural Association (ACEV) and one of its partners, the Euskadi-based Ukrainian Natasha Artemieva Kostyunina launched a call requesting help for the millions of Ukrainians fleeing their country due to the war, as narrated by the newspaper ‘El Correo‘.
The announcement in the civic center of the San Ignacio neighborhood gave rise to an enormous response of solidarity from the residents of the neighborhood and the rest of the city, which quickly made them run out of space. In addition, they also encountered the complexity of making a shipment of these characteristics and volume. And there the wheel of solidarity turned again.
Asier Vélez Pozo, Planning Manager of Aludium at the Amorebieta plant, and a resident of San Ignacio, was aware of the initiative and the obstacles they were experiencing. “They had a lot of material stacked up that it was not possible to dispatch, since the association lacks knowledge and logistical means,” he explains. From then on, he himself, together with Ángel Yáñez – Aludium’s packaging and dispatch coordinator – took charge of coordinating the shipment. With their contacts, they also involved the Bricomart Sestao and Onura companies, which also put their links in the chain, in the form of more workers and resources. Less than a week later, the difficulties were overcome and the association’s volunteers were loading the truck and it was rolling to its destination, Lublin, the main city in eastern Poland. “I am very moved by all the help we have received, everyone’s actions have been incredible,” Natasha told ‘El Correo’, once she saw the loaded truck.
