Hucknall businessman along with Forest footballer Joe Worrall collecting sleeping bags for Ukrainian refugees

A Hucknall businessman along with his close friends, including Nottingham Forest footballer Joe Worrall, have set up a campaign to collect donations of, or money towards, buying 1000 sleeping bags for Ukrainian refugees.

Ben Marshall has set up 'Sleep1000' to help people fleeing Ukraine following the Russian invasion of the country just under two weeks ago.

Speaking to Hucknall Nub News, he said: "We've got in our church, West Hucknall Baptist Church, a Polish family from Krakow and their home church back in Poland are quite heavily involved in the coordination of the refugee effort in the city. So we've kind of got a direct line in rather than just seeing the photos and kind of being moved by them, we've actually had real conversations with real people that are on the ground there.

"We said: 'look what do you need?' and it was interesting the response that we got because typically people assume that they need clothing and kids' toys, things like that but actually they said 'what we don't need is more clothes and toys', the problem being that every room that they've got, every inch of space they need to sleep people."

"They said: 'what we do need are sleeping bags and we need thermal blankets because we haven't got bedding and there is none left, we can't get that over here'. I said 'ok let us focus on that' hence the name Sleep1000 for the project.

"We just wanted to do something tangible with a real target and our goal is to get 1000 sleeping bags into their hands as soon as possible."

Mr Marshall and his friends will be driving their vans out to Poland on Monday 21 March and hope to have collected at least 1000 sleeping bags by that time.

They are currently accepting donations of new or nearly new sleeping bags as well as cash donations to buy sleeping bags.

Mr Marshall is impressed with the response the project has had since it was launched yesterday (Tuesday 8 March).

"We launched the project last night, we've raised £5000 already which is incredible, that'll allow us to buy probably 400 sleeping bags, which is a huge chunk towards the thousand. Considering that we only launched it 24 hours ago, we're so thrilled with that, the response has been amazing, and we see no reason that we shouldn't be able to hit our goal of 1000 and get them out there on the 21st."

A two minute video fronted by Mr Marshall and Mr Worrall among others, was released yesterday to help raise the profile of the campaign. This can be viewed by clicking here.

There are various drop-off points for donations around Hucknall and the neighbouring villages of Hucknall and Papplewick. These include: West Hucknall Baptist Church on Ruffs Drive, The National Academy on Annesley Road, The Horse and Groom pub in Linby, The Griffins Head pub in Papplewick, The John Godber Centre on Ogle Street and Nottingham Printing on Papplewick Lane.

For more information about the campaign and for timings that drop-off points are accepting donations, please view the Sleep1000 Facebook page here , or to donate to the cause click here.