More money for tsunami relief
Sydney’s gay and lesbian community continues to give generously to the tsunami relief funds, with thousands more dollars raised by queer organisations and venues in the past week.
The AIDS Trust of Australia has raised $147,000 for CARE Australia, with most of that amount coming from street bucket collections.
The biggest day’s takings were on 30 December when $24,700 was collected.
The total amount includes $1,200 donated by patrons at the Midnight Shift and $2,366 collected at Pride’s NYE party.
It’s really extraordinary, AIDS Trust’s CEO Terry Trethowan said. The Trust decided to give the money to CARE because the organisation runs significant HIV/AIDS programs in the affected regions.
ACON donated $3,125 to Oxfam Community Aid Abroad for the cause. The money was raised at ACON’s weekly charity event Bingay last week and from other donations made at the Imperial Hotel.
At a time of such extraordinary tragedy it is important for every one of us to consider how we can help in even the smallest of ways, ACON’s CEO Stevie Clayton said. We urge other community organisations to do the same.
Stonewall Hotel collected $2,250 which will go toward getting clean water to survivors via the charity M?cins Sans Fronti?s (Doctors Without Borders).
All Arq staff are donating a portion of their tips to the Australian Red Cross.
A queer fundraising walk will be held on Monday 17 January starting from Martin Place at 8am and finishing at City Gym on Crown Street, East Sydney.
The gym will then have a day of fundraising activities featuring drag queens Joyce Maynge, Mitzi Macintosh, Miranda Fair, Claire de Lune and drag king Sexy Galexy, plus singer Shauna Jensen. All money raised from the day will be donated to World Vision and a fundraising after-party will be held at Stonewall Hotel from 9pm.
In other fundraising news, the Bobby Goldsmith Foundation’s annual Christmas appeal raised $47,380 for people living with HIV/AIDS.
Some of the money was collected from the BGF Christmas trees located in Oxford Street venues, where patrons could purchase tags to hang on the tree.
BGF’s chief executive officer Bev Lange said she was extremely pleased with the funds as they expected to take around $10,000 less.
We were very happy with the success of this because we had such a late start last year and we’ve just been overwhelmed by people’s generosity, she said.
The money will go towards providing positive people with no-interest loans, financial counselling and helping people return to the workforce.
