If you haven’t heard by now, there are some pretty brutal wildfires going on over in Australia the last couple months and things have not been looking great over there. Firefighters have been battling these flames non-stop since they’ve started, and even with the reinforcements of other firefighters from the United States; the fires don’t look like they’ll be letting up any time soon.
If this is the first you’re hearing about ANY of this, you’re probably not the only one. There’s been a recent wave of awareness that started back in December that’s been shedding some light on the wildfires. Australian actor Chris Hemsworth took to Instagram and made his followers aware about the fires and had told them that he had donated $1,000,000 to help the firefighting efforts, which immediately started a domino effect of awareness. After this, influencers all across different social medias started to follow suit. One of the more successful examples of this is that an Australian model had started donating proceeds of photos to wildfire funds, which raised around $750,000. People have been doing livestream marathons as well in order to raise funds, with a general range being from hundreds to tens of thousands of dollars raised. Twitter has also exploded with hashtags urging people to donate and find out what’s been going on in Australia. I’m not saying that Australia owes all the efforts and fundraising to Chris alone, but it started something that you don’t normally see amongst the general blabber of social media.
It’s rare to usually see such a well-intended cause go through all channels of social media, especially with the toxicity that these online forums usually bring with them. Regardless of some people are using the fires as a way to grow their followings, or if they genuinely care about the cause they’re supporting, so many good things are coming from the awareness it has bred. So maybe you’re a person who heard about the fires beforehand, or maybe from one of the many fundraising campaigns across social media; either way you (and hopefully many other people) are aware now.
Tony Draper (AKA T-2) is all over your radio various evenings on 105.3 ROCK and hosting reports from the 102.1 CJCY Community Cruiser.
