‘‘It has been a long, stressful wait as it took nearly five months to get them there.
‘‘I just wanted to get them there, to give them to mothers and children in need,’’ she said.
Marianne said the reason she aspired to help newborns and mothers in Ukraine stemmed from watching her mother cope with the experiences she had suffered as a young girl during World War 2 in occupied Amsterdam.
‘‘I had been watching the news of the war in Ukraine and knew I had to do something.’’
The idea of sending hand-knitted pure woollen baby clothes was born back in April of last year.
Working with the Lions Club of Rangiora Lionesses, Marianne gathered together a group of knitters from North Canterbury and other places, ending up with three large boxes containing 37kg of baby clothes, hats and cardigans bound for the babies of Ukraine.
Then the real journey began.
Thanks to DHL, the boxes were sent to Poland to the warehouse clearing station for refugee-supplied aid run by the Lions Club of Kyiv.
But clearing customs, the first in a series of hiccups occurred.
One box went straight through, but the other two were denied entry and returned to the sender.
That one box incurred European Border duties despite being donated goods.
Mariannes' husband John, who handled the transportation details, said all three had identical documentation, but officials claimed two boxes had incomplete documents.
These two boxes were returned to the couple's Rangiora home, but Marianne refused to accept them and they went back to DHL’s offices.
After changing the declared value amounts from NZ Dollars to Euros and even sending one of the boxes with all documents written in Polish, the boxes began their second trip to Poland.
There, one made it straight through again and the last one was held up — again with ‘‘incomplete documentation’’.
But after John had a long discussion with DHL Poland over the phone, it too was soon released and joined the others awaiting their transportation across the border to Kyiv.
The duty incurred was paid for by a charity worker in Poland and he was later reimbursed by a Lions Club friend from New Zealand.
John and Marianne thanked the people who also helped pay all the duty fees.
John said in September 2023, World Representatives of Lions Clubs International, along with all the District Governors of New Zealand, gave a large donation towards the cost of postage.
‘‘We appreciate and thank them for their generosity.’’
The next hiccup was when the Lorry Drivers in Europe went on strike, stopping military and humanitarian aid from reaching Ukraine.
This strike finished then the Polish farmers went on strike, again blocking the border to Ukraine, and stopping all shipments of aid.
Up stepped Mark Wright, (of Hororata) the Associate Ambassador of NZ to Ukraine based in Poland, who managed to get all three boxes into Ukraine.
Once in Kyiv, a charity organisation, Ukrainian Patriot helped with the distribution of their contents.
The knitted goods were distributed to maternity hospitals in Kharkiv and Zaporizhia in Ukraine.
Both cities are near the battle front lines.
Then the emails started flowing back to the Whytes in Rangiora.
Marianne said it was a very emotional moment when they started reading about the women’s stories and their heartfelt thanks for the gifts of pure woollen clothes for their babies.
Marianne said she is already at work on the next project for Ukraine — hand-knitted pure wool baby blankets — and said she hopes this time they will get there a lot quicker than the last time.
