By Scott Spencer

On the wake of the global financial crisis, 2009 will now also be known as the year that we had the worst bushfires in history. Bigger than Ash Wednesday, more horrific than Black Friday. The death toll from the fires that ravaged Victoria is climbing higher and higher. Entire towns gone. Friends and loved ones missing, people being left with nothing. You can’t help but to have seen it on the news over the weekend.

I used to camp around these areas as a child and it’s not nice to see places you had such fond memories of, gone.  We had a long look at ourselves over the weekend and realised just how lucky those of us not directly affected by the tragedy really are and decided that somehow, we have to help.

Now, I’m not a fireman, not a tradesman, just an ordinary businessman, sitting behind my desk trying to think of something that we could do to help and thought - We’ve got more than 10,000 people that we can reach directly. Let’s rally the Mortgage Industry together and really make a difference to those that need our help. The way I see it - the big banks have all donated, now let’s try to make a difference as well.

The 2009 Victorian bushfire Fund has been launched by the Premier John Brumby in partnership with Red Cross and the Federal Government and we would like to help that fund by launching the Lending Central Bushfire Appeal.

We’ve made it so easy to donate, that you can simply use either a PayPal account or your credit card details and we’ll take care of the rest. That’s it. One click to help out.

So, what we’re going to do is this:
1) Starting the appeal - done.
2) Starting a donations list - each company or individual will be noted down on our donations page along with the amounts and this will be sent to the Red Cross on behalf of the Mortgage Industry. (this is being done now, so be patient).
3) If you wish to remain anonymous, that’s ok too - just note it down on the special instructions for us, otherwise, we won’t know.
4) Each day we will tally up the totals on the donations page at 4:00pm and send out our current totals.

All you need to do is click the “Donate” button below and fill in the rest.

To see everyone else who has donated generously, click on this link