The Telegraph team have created truly engaging long-form video content, innovating in their approach to give a voice to the people on the ground in Ukraine. This important and inspiring storytelling also grew the audience and delivered commercially.

‘Life on the Frontline’ is a video series produced by The Telegraph, in collaboration with Vans Without Borders, a UK humanitarian aid organisation, to help raise awareness around their ongoing initiative to deliver aid from the UK to Ukraine in response to the Russian invasion.

Documented by the volunteers who risk their lives, the series captures in gripping footage the highs and lows of their journeys and the stories of the people they meet along the way. The Telegraph brings their work to a global audience, delivering rich content, and generating much-needed donations that literally keep the wheels turning.

While news outlets were on the ground in Ukraine covering the daily agenda, the ambition for this series was to tell the story from an alternative perspective.

The volunteers filmed everything themselves with the support and guidance of senior producer, Valerie Browne. The team often had no signal or Wi-Fi so one of Valerie’s biggest challenges was sifting through hours of footage, working out how best to piece it together with only sporadic communication.

The volunteer team risked their lives to bring critical supplies to civilians living in recently liberated villages in Ukraine:

• The sheer relief of elderly women given much-needed sanitary products
• A disabled boy, who had lost his home, receiving vital care
• A Russian who had been left for dead by his own unit, rescued by Ukrainians and given a second chance to live

The series encapsulates the reality of war, as the team finds it.

Valerie publishes each episode with an accompanying article on the Telegraph website and YouTube channel elevating the reach of Vans Without Border’s essential work to global audiences, with some episodes attracting millions of views.

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