UK School Raises £1,000 to Help Replace Ambulance Destroyed in Ukraine

A group of students from Thomas Becket Catholic School (TBCS) in Northampton has raised £1,000 to help fund a replacement ambulance after one was destroyed by shelling in Ukraine.

Working through their school’s St Vincent de Paul (SVP) group, the pupils staged school-wide assemblies, hosted a non-uniform day, and sold sweets, cupcakes, bracelets, and keyrings to raise the funds. The effort was launched after they learned about a damaged ambulance near Kharkiv.

The fully stocked vehicle — now filled with medical supplies — was delivered safely to the city of Lviv on Tuesday by a team of volunteers from Towcester, Northamptonshire.

Jack, a student in the SVP group, said the idea came from a desire to remind others that the war in Ukraine hasn’t ended. “It was about a year and a half ago when we first started thinking about it,” he explained. “People were just not thinking about [the war] any more and we realised we needed to be raising awareness.”

The students teamed up with Steve Challen, a local aid volunteer from St Lawrence Church in Towcester, who had previously helped deliver six other ambulances to Ukraine. Challen introduced the group to footage of the destroyed ambulance, motivating them to expand their efforts.

Summer, another member of the SVP group, said the initiative gave them perspective. “We’re a secondary school — we can relate to what the youth go through. We don’t realise how lucky we are, so we wanted to raise money because every kid deserves the opportunity to do what we do here.”

This marks the seventh ambulance that Challen and his team have delivered to Ukraine since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022.

Praising the pupils, Challen said: “They were just so professionally well organised, it was absolutely incredible. If only other schools would come on board and do something similar.”