Star and QNews donating to flood relief

Star and QNews donating to flood relief

The Sydney Star Observer, Melbourne’s Southern Star Observer and Queensland’s QNews have joined forces to donate money to the victims of the Queensland floods.

Ten percent of advertising sales from the next two issues of QNews and from next week’s Star Observers will be pooled and donated to the Queensland Premier’s Flood Relief Appeal.

SSO Media Publisher Scott Abrahams said he knew many readers would be concerned about loved ones at this time.

“The GLBTI community is a highly mobile one so we recognise that many of our readers will have family and friends in areas that have been effected by the flooding,” he said.

“We know your thoughts are with them as are ours.

“SSO Media is not a large company, but we should each do what we can to help our brothers and sisters to the north.”

SSO Media will donate 10 percent of all ad revenue from issue 1056 of the Sydney Star Observer and 118 of Southern Star Observer, including sales that have already been made. QNews will donate 10 percent of new bookings and upgrades across issues 264 and 265.

QNews managing director Ray Mackereth said his offices were fine, but houses only a few hundreds of metres away had been inundated.

“Most of our staff members are ok – we’ve got around 30 people who contribute to the paper — but its not just our staff its our readers and they extend right throughout the state,” he said.

“We’re getting reports in from all over Queensland and northern NSW of people needing help who have nowhere to stay.

“We’ve had calls from GLBT people looking for help that are reluctant to go to emergency shelters as a lot of the areas that have been effected are fairly conservative and religious, and people such as transgender people and gay and lesbian couples are worried about the reception they might get from other people at shelters.”

To that end QNews is organising a billeting service to connect like-minded people who can provide or need help.

“A lot of the organisations here close over the Christmas and early New Year period, so we’ve put the call out to people that if they have somewhere where people can stay or if they need somewhere safe to stay for a couple of days or a week until the water recedes then go to our website and we’ll try to hook people up with like minded people who can provide safe accommodation for them,” Mackereth said.

info: www.qld.gov.au/floods or www.qnews.com.au

You May Also Like

Comments are closed.