on assistance and helping [Australia On Fire]

There's been a lovely upswelling of assistance from crafters (from everyone, really) as the Australian Fires of 2020 continue burning.

However, a few hard truths.

1. Any 'practical supplies' that you make are taking people away from the fire frontage to deal with the excess.

Multiple organisations have already indicated that they're running out of space to deal with all this stuff, and a lot of it isn't practical anyway. It's frequently not helping if they haven't specifically asked for it.

2. What people are providing is not necessarily what is needed.

Apparently, well-meaning knitters have crafted thousands of woollen paw-gloves...which aren't able to be used by the cute and cuddly koalas, partly because the fibre they're made from is not always suitable to put on raw wounds of paws, but also because koalas actually need their claws to be able to climb trees. So far too many of the gloves are going to landfill, having only satisfied the well-meaning people who made them.

3. Even Donating to the RFS could be shorting them in future years.

Basically, the RFS is an Australian Government department. As such, it's supported by the Australian taxpayers through their income, land, and sales taxes. Donating to the RFS, while letting people feel good about what they've given, actually allows the government to renege on their budgetary allocations.

Say that the RFS is allocated $100m a year for their budget. But through the generosity of the public due to Fire Season, they are given $20m in donations. They don't end up with $120m in budget; they end up with $80m from the government and $20m in donations.

And then in the 2021 budgets, the government says, "well, you did okay with $80m budget last year, so we're not going to increase that, you'll just have to get the rest from donations again."

so what do you do?

The RFS has asked for donations to Red Cross. (For the record, the Red Cross has been handing out $5K packages to families in Byron Bay whose buildings/properties are burned down, to keep them afloat; and that's going to be just the start of it.)

The Animal Rescue Craft Guild has today asked people to stop sewing while they take stock.

Various crafting groups have said that if you want to help, go about crafting what you usually craft, making what you usually do, and when you're done, sell it and donate the money. There are quilting groups that are not just donating their quilts but raffling them, and donating the money raffled to the relevant charity for the fires.

(One of the groups is my quilting group - the Sydney Mod Squad. We have five quilts that are up for raffle, from the last five years of entering quilts at the show. If you're interested in joining the raffle, then keep an eye on the @SydModSquad instagram account. I'm not sure if there's options for international shipping, but definitely in Australia.)

Yes, money is such a filthy, terrible, impersonal thing to give when what you want to think is that the mitten you personally knitted is sitting snugly on the paw of a poor burned koala, or the wrap you made is curled around a baby possum whose mother died in the fire. It makes you feel good, right?

And yet charity is not for us. I mean, it is. It broadens our minds, broadens our hearts, makes us look beyond our immediate circle of 'self and family and friends' to the possibilities that might yet strike at us: there but for the grace of God go I.

But the effects of charity - the people/organisations who we want to help - are sometimes best served by giving money, and, moreover, giving it somewhere that may not feel 'right' but which is nevertheless the better option than the one that does.