The volunteers make more than 100 chemical hot water bottles a day.
With the onset of winter, the volunteers set themselves the task of providing our soldiers with hot water bottles in the cold season to help them warm up quickly. Sometimes it is a matter of a soldier’s survival when they spend several hours in the cold.
They have already sent more than 1,500 heating pads directly to military units and other armed formations through volunteers with whom they have been cooperating for a long time, who deliver the pads to the frontline. This month alone, the volunteers have delivered the parcels to Kostyantynivka, Druzhkivka, Pokrovske, Velykyi Burluk, Dnipro, Vilniansk, Zaporizhzhia, Ovruch and Kyiv.
Previously, we were only able to produce 30-40 pieces each. But as the team grows every week, the students produce more than 100 hot water bottles a day.
The volunteers learnt to make reusable chemical hot water bottles, which can work up to 100 times, using video instructions. In order to raise the funds, they first had to open a fundraiser and actively engage donors, and then managed to quickly find and order the necessary components and packaging.
“These reusable heating pads are already popular among our defenders, who use them mainly to warm their bodies, hands and feet. They are also sometimes used to warm up infusion solutions or sleeping bags.
Our volunteers include printed instructions for use in every batch of heating pads we send. The process of activating the heating pad is simple: when the liquid reacts with air, it crystallises and starts to heat up. To re-use the hot water bottle, it needs to be boiled, which is accompanied by the crystals of the substance turning into liquid,” the activists explain.
The hot water bottles are made by active volunteers – students of Lviv National Medical University. Currently, the group of like-minded people consists of 15 people.
“Some may say that a hot water bottle cannot save a life, but we believe that it will give warmth and comfort to our brave defenders.
Retail chains offer a wide range of disposable heating pads that are not suitable for reuse, so it is not always expedient and cost-effective to buy them and send them to the frontline.
The war, which has been going on in the country for two years now, has made all of us participants in one way or another. Everyone who is not fighting wants to help and contribute to the victory, we want to support the soldiers on the battlefield with everything they need,” the volunteers say.
From the first days of the war, the university community has been actively involved in various volunteer missions, and there are many teachers who gather students around them to implement projects to help the defenders.
Since the beginning of this academic year, at the Department of Pharmacognosy and Botany of Danylo Halytskyi LNMU, students under the guidance of their mentor, assistant professor Roman Lysiuk, together with like-minded people, have been working on packaging aloe vera gel, making aloe and Kalanchoe juices, herbal wound healing agents that are excellent for frostbite and burns.
The student volunteers actively promote the project on Instagram, where they share information about the specifics of the hot water bottles and their use, as well as photo reports on the work they have done.