Anyone having a new year clear out has been urged to donate warm clothes in good condition to Ukrainians still living in a war zone.
The Highgate Society has paired up with not-for-profit group Lifeline Express and will be accepting donations at its headquarters in South Grove
on Saturday, January 14 and 21 from 10.30am to 12.30pm.
Since Russian forces invaded Ukraine on February 24 last year, tens of thousands of people have died and been displaced.
Those who remain are experiencing a cold and bitter winter with infrastructure such as power lines destroyed.
Lifeline Express was set up by Russian-born women living in the UK to help Ukrainian refugees.
Volunteer Sima Vassilieva was put in touch with the Highgate Society through friends at The Globe LTC tennis club in Belsize Park.
Sima Vassilieva at the Polish/Ukraine border where she went to volunteer last April (Image: Sima Vassilieva)
The 68-year-old grandmother, who lives in West Hampstead, was born in the Ukraine and moved to Russia when she was 18 and to the UK in the 1990s.
She went to the Polish/UK Border last April to help with translation for refugees coming into Poland from Ukraine.
And she says that with infrastructure destroyed, many people remaining need warm clothes to face a long winter without heating and electricity.
She said: "When I wake up in the relatively warm flat of mine, I think of people there without heating and electricity and my heart is bleeding.
"It would be absolutely wonderful if people donated because it's not only material help, but it's also a sign of support to people that they are not forgotten, people think about them."
Bundles of clothes are stored in the garages of Lifeline Express volunteers ready to be taken to Ukraine (Image: Sima Vassilieva)
Alya Samok, one of the four founders of Lifeline Express, said the group visited the Polish border in November.
She added: "We wanted to do what we thought what was really needed, and warm clothes is not that difficult to collect here.
"I gather everybody here is suffering from clutter and everybody has quite a lot of stuff which they'd be happy to donate."
She says it is mainly women and children who are travelling to the borders, adding: "It's been a tough winter and with problems with energy in Ukraine, it was obvious for us warm clothes was number one.
"Refugees don't have time to pack or bring much stuff, they are travelling very lightly."
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