Laura’s birthday gift restores church floor

THE hall floor of Gloucester’s Ukrainian Church of the Good Shepherd has been restored thanks to a birthday fundraising effort by a committed member of the community.

Working with Aid for Ukraine’s Gloucestershire branch, Laura Bullivant decided for her birthday to raise funds to renew the church floor in time for a special service to mark today’s second anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Involved with sending aid to Ukraine since the outbreak of war, Laura says she is touched by all those in the community who helped and added that the church are overjoyed with the transformation.

Help came from cleaning service Billy Russell Floor Care, the church itself and a wood floor renovation and maintenance company called Bona Professional UK.

Mentioning that the Church of the Good Shepherd collects aid to be sent to Ukraine every week, Laura says the church in the past two years was once filled to the ceiling with aid in the first two months of the war starting in February 2022.

“The church floor just got ruined and it was in a bad state so I felt this was the right thing to do to give back to the Ukrainian church and community in Gloucester.

“They have been through so much in the last two years and so many people have been brilliant at helping refugees settle in so I wanted to do something nice for them,” Laura said.

An event is being held today at the church to mark the second anniversary of Russia’s invasion.

Laura said: “Aid has gone down a bit but we’re still really touched that every week people are still bringing in aid.”