A warm room, a socket and a kettle

Humanitarian assistance sounds abstract until a winter without electricity makes it specific. Then it becomes a list: a room that is warm, a socket that works, a kettle, an internet connection, somewhere to charge a phone and tell your family you are all right.

From November 2022 thousands of heated points opened across the country — in schools, community centres, emergency service stations. They ran on generators, many of them donated, and they carried connectivity and hot drinks.

The less visible half

Alongside them came the unglamorous supplies: sheet material and timber to close damaged roofs and windows before the frost, insulation, heaters, blankets, and repairs to heating systems in apartment blocks. Aid organisations and municipalities worked to a deadline set by the weather.

I remember the ordinary decency of it. Cafés and offices with power put signs in the window inviting anyone to come in and charge a phone. That was not an aid programme. But the generators that made it possible often were.