In common with many others watching the news in February last year, I was horrified by the terrible things that were happening in Ukraine and felt helpless to do anything constructive to help, writes Margaret Lockett.

So when the government launched the Homes for Ukraine scheme, I registered immediately.

I expected it to take a long time to be matched with a family in need of support but with the power of social media and Facebook, I very quickly found Hanna and her son Andrii.

They had fled from Bucha, a city affected very early on in the war. I saw a Facebook post asking for help at 7.30 in the morning and within 24 hours we had spoken online and were filling out their visa request.

It then took five weeks for the visas to arrive. I was camping at a music festival on the Saturday when I got a call from Andrii to say they were at the station booking their tickets for the long journey across Europe and would be arriving on Monday at St Pancreas Station at 8pm. Could I meet them?

They were the first Ukrainians to move in to Alton on the scheme and have now been with me for nine months.

So my adventure began and what a rollercoaster it has been. As we travelled home on that first night, we were met at St Pancreas by volunteers willing to shepherd people across London through our bewildering tube system.

We did not need that, of course, but many arriving with no-one to meet them from the train would have been grateful for it.

As we passed through Surbiton that evening, a man seeing them produce their passports to pass through the barrier delved into his wallet and gave Hanna a £50 note. I was amazed at the kindness of strangers.

I had lost my husband just six months before the war began, and so had space in the house and space in my life to fill.

Very luckily for me, Hanna and Andrii are charming and we get on very well.

Andrii speaks very good English and Hanna is attending the college in Alton to learn English, which is coming on very well. She also volunteers at Oxfam, which fills some of her time and she feels she is giving something back.

The first few weeks after they arrived we did very little apart from paperwork – bank accounts, new phone contracts, dentists, that sort of thing.

But this sort of slow time was important. I think they needed time to come to terms with what they had been through and we needed to find our way in the house.

Andrii had been shot at by a soldier in Bucha and I think that was the moment Hanna decided to run.

We linked up with the Ukraine-Alton Mutual Aid Group and had coffee mornings at Alton Rugby Club every other Wednesday, with new Ukrainians arriving all the time. This allowed them to meet others, speak their own language and make new friends.

I have also met a whole new raft of people, and made many new friends through hosting. I am now involved in fundraising initiatives.

It would be hard not to get involved when Hanna tells me, daily, what is going on in her home country.

Hanna’s friend Sacha, still in Bucha, has recently been without electricity or running water for 45 hours – and the weather is bitterly cold.

The winter is so hard out there.

Since Hanna and Andrii arrived, we have been involved in two big events.

The first was a Ukrainian feast, where the Ukrainian community hosted an evening. I got to know many of the guests in the run-up to that.

I had the happy sound of chatter in Ukrainian as the ladies cooked dumplings in my kitchen and compared recipes in the weeks before the event.

The second event was a social, just before Christmas, where about 25 women and children made wreaths and table decorations. It was a lovely evening and light relief for them from the reality of their situation.

Of course, not all sponsoring has gone so well or lasted so long. Some hosts have wanted to get their houses back to themselves after the initial six months and no-one would blame them; and some guests have wanted to move out to have their own space.

East Hampshire have a system for rehoming guests with new hosts willing to share their houses for the next six months.

If you are considering volunteering, please do – it has been a very rewarding experience for me. I have thoroughly enjoyed having them to stay and can honestly say it has changed my life. I have made new friends, and genuinely feel I have made a big difference to their lives.

They and I hope the war will be over and they will be able to return to a peaceful Ukraine, but until then we all do our best – and if you cannot do the big things, please at least consider doing something, no matter how small.

It all adds up and will make a difference to someone in the end.

If you’d like to discuss rehoming a Ukrainian family currently living in and around Alton, please contact [email protected] at Hampshire County Council or send an email to [email protected]

Donate to the JustGiving webpage at: https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/energiseukraine