When Ukraine was invaded in 2022, Harriet Campbell was helping run her family’s popular café in the Kaimai Range.
Today, the 33-year-old Tauranga woman has made five trips into the war-torn country, delivered more than 5000 meals to soldiers and civilians near the front lines, and fallen in love with an American archaeologist she met through aid work.
Now she and her fiancé, Jason Zan, are preparing to share their story at a public talk in Tauranga on March 14.
Campbell’s first trip to Ukraine was in October 2022, just months after the full-scale invasion began. At the time, she and her family were selling The Falls Café, which they had owned for 11 years.
“We had the café for many years, and I had a background in cooking,” she said.
“I saw what people were doing on the border – there was World Central Kitchen and others – and I just thought, I have the skills to make a difference.”
She began fundraising from New Zealand for tourniquets, desperately needed on the front lines. With postal services suspended, she had to buy the medical supplies in the United States and find someone willing to receive them and forward them to Ukraine.
“I actually put a post up on Reddit asking for someone in America who could help me send them on,” she said.
That post was seen by Zan, 41, an archaeologist with experience in backcountry work and search and rescue, who had just returned from his first trip to Ukraine and wanted to continue supporting the country. Through his connections there, he knew he could help.
From that initial contact, the pair began working together. They first teamed up at a dog shelter outside Lviv, near the Polish border, caring for animals rescued from front-line areas.
“I was going to be the only one there with about 20 dogs,” Campbell said.
“So, it seemed like a really good idea to have an extra pair of hands.”
They went their separate ways after that first trip but stayed in touch, reconnecting in Ukraine in early 2023 and again over the winter of 2023–24.
Over time, their shared commitment to humanitarian work deepened into a relationship.
“It feels strange to have found so much love and happiness because of such a horrible thing,” Campbell said.
“It feels almost unfair that I’ve found that while other people are losing their husbands and children.”
The couple is now engaged.
In 2024, drawing on Campbell’s hospitality background and Zan’s field skills, they launched their own project, Never Alone Humanitarian Kitchen.
Over two three-month deployments – August to November 2024 and May to August 2025 – they cooked and delivered more than 5000 fresh meals to frontline towns, internally displaced persons centres, children’s programmes and soldiers in remote positions.
While food was critical, Campbell said morale was often the greatest need.
“People were tired. They’d already lived through two years of war. A lot of them felt like the world was starting to forget about them,” she said.
“We wanted to show them they hadn’t been forgotten – to give them a morale boost and a moment of reprieve.”
Campbell, who has also worked in relief kitchens in eastern regions such as Kharkiv, said she has found a “second home” in Ukraine.
“It is a country at war, but it’s also a country that has learned to keep living in spite of the war,” she said.
“In some ways, they live more fiercely because of it.”
She believes distance has shaped how many New Zealanders perceive the conflict.
“I often hear a lot of misinformation, and sometimes even outright Russian propaganda,” she said.
“People’s attention spans are short. When another conflict flares up elsewhere, focus shifts and that affects the aid that gets to Ukraine.”
After spending about six months apart, Zan recently arrived in New Zealand for two weeks, including attending Campbell’s sister’s wedding.
While they have not yet set their own wedding date, the couple are exploring potential job opportunities in New Zealand, while also remaining committed to supporting Ukraine.
On Saturday, March 14, they will speak at the Salvation Army Church in Tauranga, sharing what Campbell describes as “the honest experiences of two people who have made a combined 11 trips to Ukraine since the beginning of the full-scale invasion”.
The talk is both a thank you to the many New Zealanders who have supported their work and an opportunity to give the wider community insight into daily life in a country at war.
“We couldn’t have done this without New Zealanders,” Campbell said. “This has been the most worthwhile and meaningful work of my life.”
For those who attend, it will be a chance to hear not only about hardship and resilience on the front lines, but also about an unexpected love story forged in the most unlikely of places.
To support Never Alone – Humanitarian Kitchen go to their Givealittle page. Follow Harriet and Jason on Facebook