My friend JJ (who is not on Hive, but he has friends here) is currently working with humanitarian aid from Lublin. Two Ukrainian drivers are driving forth and back to some town right west of Kiyv, bringing humanitarian aid one way and refugees back the other way. One of the drivers have the driving license for a minibus - however, they are driving with ordinary cars, so Jaro was asking me if I could source around 50 kNOK (around 5 kEUR) for one 20-seat minibus and/or around 40 kNOK (4 kEUR) for a nine-seat caravelle. My counter-proposal of buying a caravelle for 12 kNOK here in Norway and driving it down was rejected for relatively good reasons.
I really don't like begging, no matter if it's on the behalf of myself or others - but those are extraordinary times, so I put 15 kNOK on the table myself and started a begging campaign. It was successful, the three first I contacted donated 10kNOK, 50kNOK and 3kNOK, so that should be enough for a minibus and lots of diesel ... or perhaps also the caravelle, if more funds can be sourced.
It's really a quaint way to transfer money in 2022, but for Poland my experience is that it's relatively cheap and efficient to simply bring Norwegian cash and exchange it in Poland. Only "obstacle" is that one has to declare it if transporting more than 25 kNOK. There is apparently no limit to how much one can export, as long as one declares it ... the customs web site says nothing about any strings attached, though I guess that it may end up with a call from the tax authorities later, with queries on where the money came from and why I brought it to Poland. I also suppose they probably won't let me board if I have too much cash and no credible documentation on where the money is coming from. I've never been through this before, but I suppose it will work out. In any case I will ask for a receipt that the money has been donated to a charitable organization, and I will try to do my best to document everything in posts here on the Hive network under the tag #operationminibus
In Norwegian media one is strongly discouraged from trying to do humanitarian aid efforts independently, and rather donate to the big organizations like the Red Cross. They are probably right about that - the bigger organizations is probably better suited on weighting and prioritizing the different needs, and they probably have good routines in place to prevent money from disappearing into embezzlements - but at the other hand most likely a decent fraction of the money donated will disappear into bureaucracy and salaries. Here we already have drivers working almost non-stop for free, without claiming any money from the people they are helping - a monetary injection here to get the driver a minibus will probably increase the value of the effort with five times.
There are a lot of things that could go wrong. I could run away with the money myself without handing it over to the aid organization, or even take half of the money myself without anyone noticing, and anyone down the line could do the same. Perhaps the drivers are taking profit from their passengers, perhaps this project is more about human trafficking than aid. Trust is very important - the people who has donated money trust me, I trust JJ, and JJ trust the drivers. Anyway, the more links in the "chain of trust", the more likely one of them will be broken. I will do what I can to document that the money is coming to good use.