Deborah Richardson

And we ended up making 15,000 Uribears.

15,000.

Yeah.

What's a Uri bear look like?

It's probably about 30 centimetres tall, although depending on who knitted the pattern, sometimes they were smaller or looking like they'd been stretched.

So somewhere between that.

But 15,000 needed a shipping container to get to Ukraine.

And we were very blessed.

We found an aid organisation, an amazing man, Tembi Powell,

who started a company called KiwiCare in New Zealand.

And he delivers medical aid and decommissioned ambulances actually out of New Zealand and Australia to the frontline.

And he was looking for toys because so many of the villages had been decimated and the children had nothing.

And I said, have I got some toys for you?

The more and more that I was just getting this support and the investment of these elderly people that were stitching so much love into each bear, I knew they wanted to see the story out and I knew they wanted to know what happened.

And so as the project was going on, it was eight months in the making eventually, I started to go, oh, my goodness, what if I could be reunited with Yuri again?

And started to put plans in place, initially not telling my family.

He absolutely didn't want me to go.

And when it became obvious that I was going to go, the one stipulation he gave me was, you are not going to Kiev.

Because Kiev was about eight or 10 hours into Ukraine from the Polish border.

And the initial plan was that I would be reunited with Yuri in a little village on the Polish-Ukraine border where his father-in-law lived that was very safe.