Over the last few years, the Centre has been preparing 'food parcels' as part of our Ceiling on Desires sadhana. The food parcels are prepared and sent to Croatia via the Refugee Relief Charity. The charity distributes these food parcels to families living in refugee camps and to other needy people in Croatia.

The collection of food parcels starts with announcement made at the Centre, and handing out leaflets - see below.

Over a period of 4 weeks, devotees are encouraged to purchase items from the list from the savings made as part of their ceiling on desires sadhana. The food items are brought to the Centre on Sundays and stored at a devotees home until the food parcels are packed.

All food items are sorted and packed into boxes - i.e. a 'food parcels' made up a selection of items suitable for a family. Some boxes are also prepared for single individuals.

Once the boxes are packed, they are transported to Wellingborough where the Refugee Relief is based.

The food parcels are loaded onto a container for transporting to Croatia, and then delivered in refugees camps and other needy families.

.........and here's an article in Zagreb daily newspaper when some volunteers went to Croatia in April 2008.

........and the translation!

Refuge Relief: 50 Families living in run-down barracks

Foreign humanitarians are taking care of the "last" refugees.

The Team: Robert Tucker and his wife Vasilija together with their Indian friends who live in the UK are bringing aid here.

In Pisarovina 55 families from central Bosnia are living in a refugees camp; they are poor and depend on foreign volunteers for help.

Last weekend a long queue formed outside the "office" of Drazena Horacek, manager of the displaced persons' camp in Pisarovina. Poor families, 55 of them forced out of central Bosnia during the war, were waiting for a new consignment of aid which was brought in last Saturday by the organization Refuge Relief from England.

More than 20 tons of aid.

The team members are Robert and Vasilija Tucker, who a month ago had to leave the Remetinec hostel because of pressure from Holding's eviction. Vasilija was one of the defenders in Vukovar who was among the last to leave the city before it fell, Robert is her husband, who met her while doing humanitarian work in Croatia during the 90s. More than 20 tons of aid arrived last week in Zagreb, of which part has already been distributed to deprived families from Vukovar, Borovo Naselje and Petrinja.

News of the truck's arrival in the village spread quickly among the refugees, and in a short space of time the poor families occupied Drazena Horacek's "office". Bojan Batista was among those in the long queue, a young man from Glamoc: "Any help is welcome, as my wife Andreja is pregnant, and we already have a 2-year-old daughter Ema. It's not easy for us, but thanks to good people we manage to get by" said Bojan.

The instigator of the aid trip is Robert Tucker, who first visited Croatia with a humanitarian convoy 15 years ago. When he saw the horrors of the war and the living conditions of the refugee families, he and six friends founded the organization "Refuge Relief in Royston, to help deprived families not only from Croatia, but around the world.

Tired but steadfast

"We've been collecting aid for many years, and we are quite tired, so we often think about giving up. But when I see a child smiling on receiving a toy or bicycle as a gift, which the parents would be too poor to give the child, that recharges my batteries and motivates me to carry on" said Robert Tucker.