AFTER boiling 6,400 litres of water, using 825kg of sugar, and spending £3,500 of fundraised money, two women served 76,800 cups of tea to refugees living in Serbia.

Rosie Johnson, then 22, from Wiveliscombe, and Lily Stephenson, from Plymouth, left at the end of February, 2017, on a mission to show support to people living in challenging conditions in refugee camps.

They called themselves SolidariTea, serving cups of tea from a van, built by their friends Harriet and Conrad, to refugees in Serbia.

The pair had already spent four months at a refugee camp on Greek island Chios, and wanted to give more.

The community in Wiveliscombe rallied around the girls to support their cause, raising around £10,000 for them to carry out their work.

Five months later, they returned from their travels. They served tea twice a day, at 10am and 3pm, and didn’t have a day off for the first 10 weeks they were there.

During their time on the tea truck, the pair met all kinds of people that had come to the barracks in an attempt to find safety, but they watched that safety get stripped away from the desperate refugees as their temporary home got destroyed.

Following the trip in 2017, Lily said: “We had no idea what the trip would be like. We thought we’d be making our way to Greece, serving tea along the way.

“But when we got to Serbia, we thought oh my god, we can’t leave. So we stayed in Serbia for five months.”

Rosie added: “The one image that will stick in our minds when we arrived is driving past the barracks and seeing ‘HELP ME’ written in big red writing on the walls."

Some of the most concerning things they learnt were the stories of the children in the barracks that had made it there alone.

From children who were forced by their parents to be smugglers of drugs and people, to children that fled their countries after watching their family members be slaughtered by the Taliban. They saw children as young as ten all on their own, in need of some stability and comfort.

Lily said at the time: “Some of the boys were as young as ten, one their own, isolated, living in an adult word.

“We tried to give them some structure, routine, and a bit of positivity.”