On this day of hearts, I’d like to dedicate this post to a different kind of love that people have an amazing ability to give during very difficult times.
As most of you would’ve heard by now, one of the worst disasters has struck Australia and its people last week – the terrible Victorian Bushfires. The effects of it are still felt until now. And most likely, for many months and years to come.
It’s a heartbreaking situation to watch, even just on television, the web, and in the papers. I can never imagine what it must be like for those who lost lives, homes, properties, and loved ones.
However, one of the wonderful things that came out of this is the incredible amount of support that people have done to help those in need. At a time when it’s easy to feel jaded and disillusioned by the terrible things that people do and say – it’s incredible to witness the beauty of the human spirit.
I cannot put together a comprehensive enough list of every single person who did amazing things over the last week or so. I wish I’m able to. But, how can I? When I know that so many people have done so many things as best as they can to extend help — from the young students who donated in schools’ Bushfire Appeals to big corporations who held their own Bushfire Drives and Campaigns.
It’s good to see people getting together for a common cause.
Some such people include the fantastic number of Australian bloggers, online entrepreneurs, and social media enthusiasts who did their best to use the web to offer help, resources, news, and other information. These are some of those that I have been made aware of:
GROUPS AND CAUSES
The Phoenix Appeal – A fundraising group organised by artists on the artist e-commerce site, RedBubble.
Samboy is Back: $10,000 for the Victorian Bushfire Appeal – A Facebook group that organised a fundraising effort.
Applaud the CFA Heroes and Empathise with the Bushfire 09 Victims – Another Facebook group that offers support.
SitePoint Sale – Web development company based in Australia put together a 5-for-1 special sale where 100% of sales from ebooks will be donated to the Bushfire victims. Darren Rowse of Problogger (who’s based in Victoria) also helped to organise this initiative. (Also blogged at JMMO).
Flickr Group: Victorian Bushfires 2009 – A collection of photos on Flickr shared by various sources.
OzBushfireAppeal – A collective of artists and craftspeople on Etsy who pulled resources together to sell their goods to raise funds for the Victorian Bushfire victims.
INDIVIDUAL CONTRIBUTIONS OF SOME AUSTRALIANS ONLINE
How to Help: Victorian Bushfires – Jasmin Tragas of Wonderwebby has put together a very useful blog post on the different ways to help those who are affected by the bushfires.
Fires in Victoria and Social Media in Australia – Fellow Adelaide-based blogger Lee Hopkins put together a very extensive commentary and resources on how social media played a part in this situation. Including videos and photos collected from Flickr and YouTube.
@Miscmum – Karen, a blogger/social media enthusiast based in Victoria, has also been Tweeting about the event.
@BeauGiles – An Australian Twitter user who put together @bushfires and @vicfires at Twitter to gather and share information.
@774melbourne – Twitter updates from the radio station.
Other Twitter users worth mentioning (as nominated by fellow Aussies): @alicam, @wolfcat, @coliwilso, and @jimboot.
Also see:
UPDATES:
- Help Recover from Fire – as recommended by Kay Walker
- Handmade Helps Out – as recommended by Melissa W
- The Toy Society – as recommended by Melissa W
If you know of anything or anyone else who should be included in this list, please feel free to let me know via comments and I’ll do my best to update this accordingly.
In any case, I hope you will join me in applauding the many Australians who did all they can to help at a time like this. Thank you.
Image source: PicApp
Some info source: Shelley Heath, Maria Kleine, Alister Cameron, and Lee Hopkins.
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Kay 02.14.09 at 8:49 pm
Other efforts- my Quaker friend in New York (Lorcan Otway) and I started a Flickr group named “Help recover from fire and flood” and distributed the Red Cross online donations url to our contacts all over the world. The group has 362 members so far. We have had a lot of support from the USA and Europe, which we hope has flowed on to the Bushfire and Queensland Floods causes. The group is at: http://www.flickr.com/groups/help_recover_from_fire/
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Shai Coggins reply on March 29th, 2009:
Thanks, Kay. Just added that link in to the post. Well done.
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Jasmin 02.14.09 at 8:58 pm
what an emotional week Shai. I felt like the least I could do was to list a few things for my friends not on Twitter. I’m simply amazed by the outpouring of support from people everywhere for the bushfire victims. Thanks for your lovely post. Love the Etsy and Redbubble links!
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Shai Coggins reply on March 29th, 2009:
Hey, Jasmin. I’m always amazed with the things that you do. Keep up the great work.
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Melissa W 02.14.09 at 9:09 pm
The Meet me at Mike’s girls have a new blog here – http://handmadehelpsout.blogspot.com/ – where crafty people can do their bit.
And another blog – http://thetoysociety.blogspot.com/ – is asking for handmade toys to be donated (rather than left for other people to find like usual.)
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Shai Coggins reply on March 29th, 2009:
Thanks for those links, Melissa W. It has been a while, but I added those links in to the post anyway.
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Lee Hopkins 02.14.09 at 9:35 pm
G’day Shai,
Thanks for compiling this list. My motivation to compile a number of posts around the bushfires was simple — as a former CFS firefighter myself I had a personal interest in letting our overseas friends understanding the devastation that the stupid, the careless and the wilfully destructive can cause.
Now that one of the alleged arsonists has been caught and charged, I wonder how long it will be before the others give themselves up lest they be handed over to vigilantee squads by their mates for a few dollars and ‘a bit of a laugh’. At least in police custody they can be hopeful of being kept out of harm’s way, whereas I would hate to be in their boots if they are handed over to vigilantees.
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Shai Coggins reply on March 29th, 2009:
Ah, that explains it, Lee.
In any case, thanks again for all your feedback and contribution.
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Lee Hopkins 02.14.09 at 9:42 pm
Just as an aside, if you want to read more about why I am obsessed with the fires, feel free to read http://leehopkins.net/2009/02/10/more-on-the-victorian-bushfires/
Cheers,
Lee
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George Hall 02.15.09 at 12:30 am
I really do have to ask a question about the individual contributions list. Apart from @wolfcat, @cfa_updates and @774melbourne I haven’t heard of the others. And I’ve been glued to #vicfires and #bushfires since Saturday night, February 7. Likewise, I’m still intrigued to hear @BeauGiles created those two hashtags on Twitter. The first I’d even heard of him, he came in around day two or three, mentioning making it private. Imagine you’ve been doing actual helping for that amount of time only to hear someone suddenly say that.
@BeauGiles really didn’t do that much, and thankfully, the record on the Twitter timeline clearly shows that. That’s the beauty of Twitter. A continuing record which will show who was doing the right thing and who was just crapping on. Likewise, another person claimed to have created a “channel” called #firecomments. He was perhaps first to use that tag specifically, but was NOT the person seeing the need to keep information on #vicfires/#bushfires seperate from condolences. And his contribution to helping on Twitter during the bushfires is less than a Twitter page.
Meantime, those of us manning those hashtags prefer to get on with doing the real job, helping people with the information we keep pumping to where people need it. We feel people like the two examples given greatly disrespect the victims/survivors of the fire as well as the volunteers who’ve done the real hard yards in the key hashtags. Using the situation to advance your profile and be a media whore doesn’t get respect. Far from it. Rolling up your sleeves and using your skills and providing real information and help or relaying it through is more valued.
After the fires are out…after the record and Twitter timeline are checked…we’ll find out who the real Twitter heroes of the situation were. Me, if I were an employer, and I could pick people for jobs by what they did and how during the bushfires with their Twitter contribution…I’d sack @BeauGiles or send him to a company where blatent crap is more highly regarded.
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George Hall 02.15.09 at 11:38 am
My first post here was at 3am, so excuse me for being a bit in need of decaffeinated…
Today I’ve had a look at what Mr @BeauGiles did. It’s a group account. It still takes feeds directly from #bushfires without needing to check TwitterSearch. Funny…I thought RSS did the same thing. Interestingly, this group has around 423 followers. Mr Giles adds this was “whipped up” by him.
While calmer this morning, I’m still going to point out that there are people on #bushfires who did far more than Mr Giles. People still doing more. People he’s taking his feed from anyway. Making an over-glorified RSS feed, turning it into a member’s only group, does what? Slows up a lot of updates, that’s for sure. I see the time lag between a tweet on #bushfires and then its version on twitter.com/bushfires. That doesn’t help the situation.
I’m sorry, but there’s nothing special there in what he did. And it’s showboating at the wrong time.
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Shai Coggins reply on March 29th, 2009:
Thanks for all that, George. I understand your frustration and all that. I don’t know the whole story, so I can’t really comment on this. I posted what I was just told/informed. I did ask @BeauGiles to comment on this post when this discussion came up. But, he either didn’t receive my message or he didn’t want to comment. So, I’m not sure how to proceed from here. In any case, I commend you for your contribution. Thanks again.
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Shai Coggins 03.29.09 at 9:28 pm
Thanks again, everyone, for your contributions on this. I’m just catching up on some old posts that I missed responding to. So, here I am…
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George Hall 03.30.09 at 9:47 am
Actually, one of the other adult volunteers on the actual hashtag #bushfires did query what Beau did. I must point out that Beau never asked any of the adult volunteers on the hashtag their opinion on creating @bushfires.
I believe the other volunteer did ask Beau as to whether it was right to commandeer the feed and make it private. Perhaps that’s why Beau himself isn’t answering. He may know that he didn’t have the respect of the real volunteers on the real hashtag.
In the final analysis, I SUPPOSE it may have helped. But there are people who did a more selfless job without puting a “whipped up by” tag on the proper hashtag. I’d still give more credit to the volunteers on the real hashtag. The ones doing the actual work.
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