ORANGE has once again proven its generosity helping two families affected by life-changing accidents.
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The Fowler family lost their home on New Year’s Day and their GoFundMe page has already raised more than $4300 of the $10,000 total from 81 donors.
They have also had furniture, clothing and food donated to help them get back on their feet.
Incredibly the owners of Orange Bakehouse, who lost their store in an earlier fire and would undoubtedly be facing their own cost pressures at the moment, was one of the donors.
Jessica Drady experienced not only spinal injuries in a car accident just before Christmas, but the loss of her trade tools and half her utility through theft when she returned from hospital.
She similarly has had an outpouring of support and offers of donated tools.
The heartlessness of the thefts aside, it is encouraging to see such a giving spirit so close after Christmas, especially when we were warned we would spend $48.1 billion as a nation over Christmas.
In fact, we expected to reach up to 360 transactions a second in the dying stages of the pre-Christmas period.
The Salvation Army in Orange even warned shoppers not to overspend in a bid to keep up with what they believed friends and family injected into Christmas festivities.
But it seems in this case that people indeed prefer giving than receiving and instead of spending money on pricey panicked gifts, they are helping charitable causes benefiting people who do not have the luxury of worrying about over-consumption.
One of the GoFundMe page comments left for the Fowler family was quite poignant: “Please remember helping hands are strong hands”.
It flows on from the saying, many hands make light work.
Life is nothing if not trying, but the challenge is always made more bearable the more people there are to help.
This is why it’s also important to support the charity organisations whose role it is to help people in need.
St Vincent de Paul in Orange was again a victim last week when donations were trawled through and strewn around outside its McNamara Street shopfront.
If we can make the leap from helping the victims of crime and misfortune to addressing the cause, it will make for a good year.