They need your help yesterday, because tomorrow may be too late

 With pictures like this one arriving in my email box from charity partners in Syria, the Monastery of Saint James in Qara -   I know that I must appeal to you for your urgent help.  This Antiochian orthodox church is leading a coalition of different churches like Baptists, Evangelicals, Protestant, Syrian Orthodox helping  tragic victims of war, no matter what religion they are. The devastation and ruin all over country means that thousands of people are living on the streets in the most tragic, unimaginable and appalling circumstances.

We need to deliver more crucial aid to Syria and the surrounding region of Kurdistan. The reality is that we need to deliver those goods today in order to save lives.

Because we are under-funded, I decided to share my challenges in logistics and warehousing on LinkedIn. Starting up GOODS FOR GOOD on a shoe-string budget hasn’t been easy.  So, I was so totally thrilled to have some offers of support, after going public and sharing those challenges. A contact in the menswear industry for many years, Garry Wilson, contacted me late one evening, via LinkedIn messaging -  and I leapt out of my armchair with glee as I read his text. Yes, we have finally received some much needed help with moving and storage of pallets of humanitarian aid goods in the UK. Great thanks to Berwin & Berwin for rising to the challenge.

However, we still need to move the goods overseas to Syria – (being one destination), and funds are urgently needed for these international logistics. It costs £3,000 to send a forty foot container of aid to Syria and £6,500 to send goods by truck to Northern Iraq to one of forty-five refugee camps we work with.

Following Garry’s great offer of help, the good news just got even better!

Because on 12th February we received our charitable status - and GOODS FOR GOOD (GLOBAL) was officially registered with the Charity Commission.

My great personal thanks for the most amazing support and helping to make this all of this happen goes to: Max Veenstra, Noah Bernstein, Vivienne Lewis, who are our trustees. Andrew Jacobs, Ian  Crooke, Ian Lobatto, Kieron Tarling, Neville Spiers, Galia Sum Gilo - our professional management team of advisers. Also a huge thanks to Danny Bluestone and the Cyber-Duck team - for our fab website. And not forgetting Opher Segev and Ollie Mamon.

Also, huge thanks go to our 92 volunteers - our ambassadors - who help us regularly to sort and pack humanitarian aid goods. They work really hard and also tell everyone about our virtuous cycle of giving. On Mitzvah Day, we launched inter-faith activities in the warehouse; having a great social impact, both locally and overseas.

Apart from our regular Ambassadors, the knitters from the charity Knit for Peace, have been working tirelessly, creating literally hundreds of thousands of amazing knitted garments and blankets for the refugee crisis and delivering them to us. Not only knitting with love and dedication, but also sponsoring the trucks to arrive to the gates of the refugee camps.

And yet, with this good news, I must implore you for more immediate help please.

We need funding to make this all happen.  In the next week or so, I will be setting up a fundraising page on https://mydonate.bt.com which means that you can help sponsor a truck directly to the refugees. You can set up your own fundraising page and get your family, friends and community involved. Please email me for more info. rosalind@goodsforgood.org.uk.