Australia is burning....What can we do to help?

Australia is on fire and we as a community can band together to aid the people who have lost love ones, lost their homes and belongings, care for and rehabilitate the wildlife and provide support to those that have been fighting at the forefront of these fires for over a month.  

At least 23 people have lost their lives, it has destroyed at least 1600 houses, 100 of 1000 of hectares of bushland have been lost. Fires are still burning in NSW, SA, QLD, WA, NT, ACT and Tasmania...every state!

Not only today but in a week, month and even years down the track these communities will need our help to rebuild.

We have broken how we plan to help generate $$$ into three areas to help maybe give ideas to others...Ultimately at the end of the day $$ are what is need so that it can be distrubuted to the when and where needed. They can purchase what they actually need as well as purchase from local businesses which will in turn help to build their local economy. 

The Kids:

We use Barefoot Investor for Families and the kids pocket money goes into: Save, Spend and Give. For the next year the kids will be giving the 'Give' portion to the Red Cross Charity. We will send it through in monthly amounts.

They also want to create a lemonade stand- making and then selling cups of ice cold lemonade to our local community at 50C a cup. All money made by them the want to donate to the koalas. (WIRES Wildlife Rescue)

The Household:

In the next few months selling unwanted items on Gumtrees/Marketplace and donating the money raised. 

Also foregoing the purchase of a coffee 2-3 times a week. This is $5 a time x 3= $15...so if we do that for the 52 weeks it is $780.... per person.

Shopping with companies that are donating profits is not consumerism instead we are going to purchase those products anyway so we might as well go with a company that will pass some of that on rather than keeping it in their back pocket.

We are also jumping on community events like #sweatforacause that is donating all of the money raised as well as joining groups to make wildlife pouches. 

These are a few things that we are doing to raise a few $$$ for the communities affected by the devastating fires. It may only be a small drop in the ocean of the help needed but if everyone did what they could the response would be immense.

Feature image from Department of Defence