Some of them MAY or may not have committee members hiding in them so they can see the faces of the children come Christmas Day when they open their gifts up. Hence some are more heavier than the rest. No names mentioned, HA!
But seriously, we are down to literally praying for a miracle now to get that money as freight companies (excluding Cowra Freight), just don't feel the Christmas Spirit this year. We can understand why, truly we do but try explaining to 125 babies under 3 and 135 from 3 to age 12, that Santa may not be coming this year again.
Their Mums and Dads and their big brothers and sisters never returned home to them and now Santa has done a runner too.
The past 2 weeks has seen a massive jump of supporters offering help but sadly they don't have the means to help financially right now.
However, we are absolutely over the moon and Jupiter with all the stunning photos we have received of donations, all hand made; that will be arriving after April 1, 2015 when our donations re-start coming in again.
We have had some awesome (or as our Aboriginal friends say "Deadly") small Australian businesses put their hands up to help and or donate goods.
We've had several very well known organizations "smack" us in the face with their cold heartedness and nastiness, rejection and jealousy whilst trying to get financial or merchandise donations. It's just made us more solid and it has backed up a few of our committee's stand on certain aspects of our charity.
People want us to become a multi million dollar corporate charity with offices world wide and more or less glory for them to be a part of. We want our small humble charity to keep it's ethics and morals; work in humility and compassion to help fellow Aussies. Have one head office, no wages for committee members, and no DGR (for tax deductions per financial donations over $2).
People say we are insane not to get a DGR but we believe that when you donate something to a charity, you give it freely without receiving anything back in return, even from the tax office. It is no longer a charitable gesture when you receive it back.
That is one of our morals and standards and if people don't agree then they don't have to donate.
Answer yourself this......
Can you stand there and say to me "I will give you $5,000 to help feed starving Australian babies, on condition I can get all my money back from tax".
Does that mean that if you can't get it back on tax then you would allow those babies to die instead? Thats what it all boils down to!