Trucks from all over the region line up at the Healing Hands International warehouse south of downtown. Some came from as far as Alabama, bringing along donations for Ukrainian refugees.
Inside the warehouse, James Rucker of Healing Hands lists some of the supplies he’s helping unload.
“Bandaids, antibiotic ointment, deodorant, toothpaste,” Rucker says. “Things for refugees as they are being relocated and setting up in small apartments, that they can have a sense of normalcy.”
These items are for people who were forced to flee their homes in Ukraine. Many of them left without these basic necessities.
The supplies are packed up into a plastic bucket, like the kind you’d see at a hardware store.
Paige Pfleger WPLN NewsSome donors wrote messages on the buckets, like “prayers for Ukraine” or “with love from Lebanon, TN”
“The buckets are really useful in and of itself,” says Jana Owen with Healing Hands. “It’s waterproof, you can carry it, they all have handles, you can sit on it.”
She walks through the warehouse, counting pallets full of stacked buckets. She estimates they’ve collected 1,000 so far.
“I didn’t count these that are being unloaded though,” she says, pointing to another truck that pulled up.
She hopes they’ll collect more than 2,000 by the end of the day.
They’ll be loaded onto a shipping container later this week. Then, they’re on to Poland where they’ll be handed out to Ukrainian refugees.
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