The Kindness of Strangers and the War in Ukraine
Pop-up charities
Ever had this happen to you? You’re walking down a street and someone smiles at you, and you smile back, and before you know it, someone else is smiling because you’re smiling?
I think kindness works this way too.
A month ago, I noticed a dated-looking ambulance sitting in front of a neighbor’s house in Wimbledon. It was there for days. Then it was gone and another one appeared.
It turns out the couple who lives there— Aliya Aralbayeva, originally from Kazakhstan, her husband, Kyiv-born Andrei Semikhodskii, and a growing band of volunteers— are buying decommissioned ambulances, filling them with medical supplies and driving them to Ukraine where they go to neonatal units, children’s hospitals and military field hospitals.
This in itself is remarkable. A group of Southwest Londoners, including a construction worker, a lawyer and a DNA expert, with zero humanitarian aid experience, are running a pop-up charity that’s saving Ukrainian lives.
But what makes the story better is that it all started with one act of kindness that sparked another, and then another.
It’s late February and the Russians invade Ukraine. Oleksandr Hulitskiy, a Ukranian construction worker in the UK, takes his…
