A Perthshire adventurer is appealing for tinned food donations as he prepares to set up a road-side field kitchen to help Ukrainian refugees.
David Fox-Pitt is taking a convoy of trucks to the Poland-Ukraine border where he plans to provide 1,000 meals per day.
The strapline for the mission is ‘Make Pizza Not War’.
David, 57, told The Courier: “We’ll be on the Polish side of the border, closest to the Ukraine town of Lviv.
“Our mission is to touch the lives of 1,000 people a day.
“That could be a cup of tea, a cup of coffee, it could be pizza.
“My company, Wildfox Events runs outdoor events and challenges so we are geared up for outdoor catering.
“We’re bringing out 40×20 canvass marquee, tables, chairs, gazebos, tea urns, gas, heaters, cookers, pizza ovens, barbeques, generators, first aid and lots of food.
“I’m a great believer that if you’ve got the where-withal and logistics as we have, you should put it into action when needed and now it’s needed.
“That’s why we are going out.”
Helping young people
David’s convoy is being organised under Siobhan’s Trust, which was set up by David in 2020 in the name of the late Countess of Dundee.
The trust runs outreach projects for young people in the Dundee area and has been involved with humanitarian projects in Brazil and Lebanon.
During the Covid-19 lockdown, the trust’s Operation Grab Bag delivered meals to nurses and doctors.
Now David hopes that he and the small team of volunteers who’ll join him, can make at least a small difference with the developing humanitarian disaster in Ukraine.
Meanwhile, David’s wife Jo has also been involved with helping co-ordinate the collection of blankets, emergency equipment and sanitary items through the Perth Polish Scouts.
“We’ve got a fantastic contact called Alexandra who is Ukrainian,” he said.
“She has good contacts about where we should go, what we should do, and she’s really helpful.
“We don’t know anything about Poland let alone Ukraine. But we’ve got logistics.
“When we set this set up, we’ll train local people to run it, stay as long as it takes, and maybe set up another. That is the mission.
“When people donate, all the money that comes in will be spent on food. We are giving up all our time and logistics.
“The main cost is food that we are looking for help with.
“But I must stress we don’t want meat or dairy products, or lettuce. Any donations of food – especially donations of tinned food that can survive – is welcome.
“When we run out of food, which we will do after a couple of weeks, we’ll go and re-supply in a Polish supermarket.”
Lessons in resilience
David is no stranger to making a difference.
From hotel management to travel, the Dorset-raised father-of-three has tried many things in life and learned many lessons about “resilience”.
However, he was in his mid-30s before he discovered his “real passion” when he came to live at Loch Tay and started putting on charitable events through Wildfox Events which have so far raised over £40 million worldwide.
Amongst the events he established was Perthshire’s highly successful Cateran Yomp.
While watching Ukrainian developments on the news, it really hit home that these refugees could be any of us and that if Britain was ever invaded, we’d hope others would help us in a similar way.
“The main thing is to thank all those for their amazing donations so far,” he added.
“There’s a huge swell of love and support for Ukraine at the moment.
“People around the world are united in the horror of what’s going on. They can see what a nutter Putin is.
“You just need to read Catastrophe by Max Hastings.
“Politicians need to read history. You can see how easy it is for these things to go wrong and for us all to get caught up in it.
“And we will get caught up in it which is why we need to do what we can to help.
“The main thing for me is to get out there and do something rather than watch it on TV.”
Anyone wanting to make food donations can go to www.siobhanstrust.uk/ or get in touch with David direct via david@wildfoxevents.com
