Save a life, save your soul…
Three weeks ago, BeachGrit and The Bucket List threw a double-bill of the Lisa Ando biopic, Trouble, and the launch of Ian Cairns’ two-volume memoir, Kanga, to raise cash for SurfAid.
If you didn’t know, SurfAid is a heroic organisation that that goes into remote Indonesian communities and builds wells, water tanks and community health centres, hands out mozzie nets and trains and educates locals in disease prevention etc.
Twenty years ago, an Australian doctor, Davey Jenkins, was on a trip to the Ments, did a little trip up-river to shoot phots of the happy natives and saw a bunch of children’s graves.
“I was the first doctor ever to visit the village. I saw women and children dying from malaria, malnutrition and inadequate living standards – things that I knew were treatable and, better still, preventable by helping them change behaviours such as basic hygiene and better breastfeeding practices.”
Doc says the scene haunted him for the ret of the trip.
“I began questioning my life. Did it have meaning? Were my skills wasted chasing some corporate carrot? What if I could make a real difference to these people? The thought of more children dying drove me mad with frustration and helplessness yet, at the same time and in some strange way, the potential solutions inspired me. I couldn’t just walk away from those kids; I vowed to return to the Mentawai with people and supplies.”
It’s a little rough on the conscience to think that while you’re slugging gin-and-tonics and watching satellite TV on a five-hundred-dollar-a-night boat, kids (and adults) are dying in imaginably ghastly, and preventable, ways.
Wanna help?
It ain’t just army blankets, buttermilk, a bag of cracklins and cornbread being handed out.
And it costs.
Click here. Send money. Save a life, save your soul etc.
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I guess the remote indigenous communities in Australia are not cool enough for wanker groups like surf aid or the fuckin surf lawyer group , piss off and grow a set. There is so much that needs doing for these remote communities that it is simply a farce that some dude(s) goes overseas on a holiday and sees some poverty and then sets up some dodgy fund when in his own back yard children are crying out for help ..yep the beds are really burning
Golly gee, how did these ignorant savages ever even survive before the enlightened white people showed up? Oh yeah, they had a complex nature-based society that thrived for tens of thousands of years. Want to help them out? How bout leaving them the fuck alone, kicking out the timber companies, palm oil plantations, missionaries and government agents? Like that’ll ever happen …
Leave the surf charter operators though
$6.7823
Keep tongue punching comments to the dinner table please… Also stick to the one account.
No worries cunt
Meh, I’ll wait ‘til the foil version comes out.
Gonna be might hard to do yoga on that thing with all the hardware.
Not only do I upvote anything by Negs, I upvote any mentions of Negs. One can never be too cautious with these things.
Holy brexit..
Ha – I wouldn’t give them that much credit.
Negs tho, different kettle of fish …
Your email, your ip ….
Kaikoura plumbers rule !
You can keep Russell Crowe but we invented the Pav and Dr Jenkins is one of us. He is not an Australian. Just like Crowded House etc
Surfaid do a lot of good stuff. They are also well supported. Give Surfrider Australia some love as well – they help in your own backyard.
Didnt SurfRider Australia protest dumping the Tweed River sand at Snapper Rocks with great vengeance and furious anger.
With pitchforks and lanterns?
And didn’t that actually create a pretty good wave?
Scotty, it’s a given.
Won’t be a lot different.
What’s the going rate for a slightly used and abused soul these days?
Basically that just means you’re a US citizen in the era of Trump. So dime a dozen.
Look, and I don’t know who could if I couldn’t, but I never voted for that man.
What’s worse is 30% of those around us (and of these, 99% are white) would walk into a voting booth and willingly push that button a second time. Turns out Idiocracy was prophetic.
St Pete: On the one hand when astro is cunty he’s very, very cunty but otoh when he’s not being cunty he can be a good cunt.
Hmmm tricky …. ahh, fuck it. Down he goes. No pearly gates for you, cuntee !
Nothing feels better than donating to Surf Aid. Good stuff guys.
Yep, it don’t hurt to peel a hundred off in these cases.