Fund Raiser

[C James]

Fund Raiser is an excelent short read, and uses fiction to highlight a very real issue and organization.

One underlying theme that struck me was that out of a needless tragedy, some good came. I hope that result is not limited to fiction.

 

 

I'm going to add part of the credits here, as this is a real issue, and a real campaign.

 

This story is dedicated to the memory of Jodie Gater and Stephanie Gestier.

 

Yellow Ribbon Australia (http://www.yellowribbon.org.au) is a programme designed by young people, for the benefit of young people. It is a help seeking/peer support programme, with a simple aim:

 

To create an environment which encourages and empowers young people to ask for help in a time of need. It further aims to educate the community to know how to respond to the needs of young people.

 

Since its introduction, Yellow Ribbon has positively affected the lives and help seeking abilities of thousands of teenagers around the world. Yellow Ribbon Australia and Sara Lee are working together to inform the Australian community that "ITS OK TO USE THE FOUR LETTER WORD

[Graeme]

I have to thank one of my readers for this story. I received an email a couple of days ago from someone who hadn't written to me before. He said he had read most of my stories and asked me if I could dedicate something to Jodie and Stephanie. I told him I couldn't promise, but I would see what I could do. I spent the rest of that day (I was at work when the email came through) thinking about it. I went to bed that night, and then got up again fifteen minutes later to start writing. The next day, I had feedback from some people I had emailed the first draft to, made changes, had the story edited and sent to the original reader for comment. I posted it last night (my time).

 

While I was concerned as a result of the news reports of what had happened, I probably wouldn't have written anything without that prompt from the reader, so THANK YOU.

 

I also made the decision to CopyLeft the story, not copyright. It can be freely distributed without my explicit consent (see the bottom of the story for the details).