Our first visit to Ukraine was in October 2022 when Rachel and Henry visited Lviv and Kyiv to meet up with our third co-founder Andrii Myzak, to see for themselves the country’s palliative care teams in action. Their aim was to find out exactly what was needed and to earmark hospices which were desperate for immediate help. They chose Sambir Hospice in Lviv and a mobile hospice unit in Kyiv as the charity’s first two partners.

 

Rachel and Henry were incredibly moved by the devastation the war is wreaking on the population of Ukraine.  She saw teenage boys in military uniforms, not much older than her own son, sitting around in town squares drinking coffee, while waiting to go to fight for their country.​

 

Not to mention Rachel's, Henry’s and Andrii’s extraordinary evacuation to an underground bomb shelter as shells were going off all around them.