‘A Hand Up
Day’ surprised me with what people emailed me. I read all about people buying
hotdogs to a pancake place helping homeless by giving pancakes away with
clothes collected from staff and friends.
Now some
might say only 13 emails is not much, but I say 13+ people took one day out of
there life to help in most cases someone / people they didn’t know before or
have walked passed and looked down so not to make eye contact. It’s a great
start. I must say most emails were from the U.S.A you guys are great.
I’m very
proud right now because even if just one of those people help people in need
from now then that could be hundreds helped in the future where-ever they are.
Pass-it-forward yeah.
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WOO-HOO I
did it, I put a successful BBQ together in 8 days. Look at the pictures.
Homeless came and there was food, drinks, all the clothes, blankets, sleeping
bags, toiletries and much more waiting for the much needed homeless of Brisbane
at 10am Sunday morning. Even though most turned up by 8:30am instead of the
10am start as planned. Ha-ha.
I wasn’t the
one that made all this happen. There’s many to thank, maybe if I put it into
what happened each day and in order I’ll get them all in. So here’s how I was
able to put a BBQ on for the homeless in 8 days.
Day 1 Saturday.
It was cold
and raining when I thought about putting on a BBQ. Thinking it was the weekend
I decided not to do anything about today. Except tell some friends about it.
Day 2 Sunday.
A very icy
cold and raining night which followed by a raining and cold day. I thought it
was the weekend and I couldn’t do much.
Day 3 Monday.
Well the
same cold and not much to do but it was a public holiday here so I couldn’t do
anything with putting together the BBQ. This was bad because now I had 6 days
left and still no location, food or even clothes.
Day 4 Tuesday.
I remember
thinking I can’t do it! Bad timing and to be honest I thought of every reason
why I couldn’t do it. I went to work and really was feeling down about it all
because it was so cold and I knew homeless were out there in it.
Now when I
started doing my shoe shining with Buffed they introduced me to a guy to be a
mentor, now I was very lucky because my mentor was David Wilson from BDO (He’s
a partner there). Well David kept giving me advice about business matters and how
no-matter what the task, there’s always a way to get it done. Which was funny
because I’m always saying the same thing to homeless all the time. But when it
was said to me it set in more, so I listen.
I started
thinking of things David had told me over the past and to be honest I just whipped
out a pen and paper and just started writing all that I’d need to have a BBQ.
Food, Drinks, Location, BBQ’S to cook, Clothes, Toiletries, Insurance, Tables
and a lot of helpers. Then at the bottom of the list I wrote 5 Days to Go. I
stared at that piece of paper for about an hour thinking of ways I could do it.
I called a
mate of mine “Peter” who is the manger of ‘Bleeding Heart Cafe’ (It’s a Art
Gallery, 166 Ann St City), Peter says “Mate happy to have you use our area out
the front to help the homeless, But because it’s Heritage Building no naked
flames like a BBQ”
Awesome I
had a location, covered by insurance and they had tables we could use to put
the clothes on which are the three biggest things when having a BBQ for
homeless. I’ll say I had a bit of a skip in my step for the rest of the day. Ha
ha
I went home
and started printing and cutting up lots of pieces of paper to hand out to
people asking for clothes and things.
Day 5 Wednesday.
Starting at
6am I handed out a flier to every person I could get to, saying I was
collecting any and all clothes, blankets, toiletries and things for the BBQ
they never wanted to see again collecting on Friday morning. But also asking
for helpers to cook and fold clothes to be put on the tables for the homeless
to go through for what they wanted and keep for free.
Day 6 Thursday.
Two of my
wonderful customers (Wendy and Stephanie) came up to me and said they had sent
an email to all Bank Of Queensland (BOQ) staff and collecting a huge amount of
clothes and going to be passing the hat around to collect for food and drinks, there AWESOME.
Now I still
have injuries so I didn’t but I felt like doing cartwheels up and down the
foyer. Ha-ha My BBQ was coming together because the community were coming
together to help the homeless and people in need.
After work I
meet up with the fantastic Benedikete, she’s a counsellor that helps me to help
people that well really need counselling in life. Benedikete and I handed out
fliers to homeless from the Valley through to Southbank. Just stopping and
quickly chatting and saying about where and when the BBQ is and getting clothes
and blankets. A lot of walking. (Was really feeling it in the legs. Ha-ha )
Day 7 Friday.
Now I have
my Buffed chair in the foyer of the BOQ building and they have said if I ever
need to there’s a small storeroom out back. I spent all morning saying thank
you and grabbing bags of clothes and blankets to carry to the backroom. Huge
amount, bags came from everywhere. Not just BOQ but the coal company Peabody, Qcat,
Department of Veterans Affairs all came together to help people they may have
never meet, but wanted to give someone in need a Hand Up. Remember “A Hand Up
Day”.
Wendy and
Stephanie came up to me about lunch time and told me they had passed the hat
and collected $850 and asked me to write a shopping list of food and drinks and
things needed for the BBQ and with the rest bought new jumpers to hand out.
2pm came and
I asked as many people as I could to help move all the clothes, food and things
to a Taxi just outside to take to Bleeding Heart. We needed two Taxi’s and one
of them was a Maxi Taxi, we kept throwing bags and bags in saying it’ll fit,
but no we needed the second one too.
4 of us took
about a 1 ½hrs to unload and stack the bags in a room waiting for Sunday
morning. A lot of bags.
Then I spent
the rest of the day handing out fliers to as many homeless and people in need
as I could find.
Day 8 Saturday.
Thinking I
had everything done and planned all I had to do was tell the homeless to come
and eat and get warm clothes. But no, my wife Cheryl asks how we are going to
cook the food without using flame BBQ’S? I’d forgotten about that. OHNO. Some
people had given me money for the BBQ event which I didn’t use yet but was
holding it for extra things you need that you run out of. I handed her the
money and asked her to buy a electric BBQ plate because there’s power there. I
knew I didn’t give her enough but we had money in the bank.
I came into
the city and meet with two lovely ladies (Liz and Cath). I’m going to be talking
about how wonderful they are later, but this post is long enough already.
We walked
and walked everywhere handing out fliers to homeless. Some stopping for a chat.
A good 3-4 hours of walking to get to as many people as we could. Then the best
idea, (I know some will not like) we stopped at the pub and had a couple of
beers as a reward for doing such a good job.
Day 9 Sunday.
It says day
9 but really I couldn’t do much for the first 3 days. I felt proud knowing I
had put together a BBQ in less than one week and because it was getting so
cold, I was going to be handing out sleeping bags, blankets, clothes,
toiletries while homeless ate and drunk all they wanted.
8am my
family turn up to start setting up tables and things and not to my surprise there
were homeless there already waiting, even though we said it starts at 10am.
The bags
came out, the tables were set up and the food started cooking.
Some left
and came back for more clothes or food and there were many of happy smiles. The
toiletries, sleeping bags and blankets were first to go.
Staff came
from the BOQ building and helped homeless as a community coming together.
About 90-140
homeless turned up.
I got 4
phone numbers of homeless people that said they want to get on their feet. A
week later one changed his mind and didn’t meet. Great result, we can’t help
everyone but look for the ones we can.
The one
thing I’m very proud of is that, these people were offered extra blankets and
warm clothes but only took what they needed and most said they wanted to leave
enough for others too. NOT GREEDY.
Now I
normally donate all clothes left over to the 139 club (homeless centre) but
this time I know there’s a Mates helping Mates BBQ coming shortly so I bagged
all clothes and stored at my little unit to give straight to the homeless. The
left over food went to ‘Knitting for the Needy’ as they were meeting a food van
that afternoon and they will cook and hand out.
Nothing is
ever wasted at our BBQ’S (Too hard to come by everything. Ha-ha)
Now some
people aren’t sure if this event being a Mates helping Mates BBQ. It wasn’t.
Mates helping Mates which I am a director of had postponed the event they had
planned and It was getting very cold out so I as Grant the Polite Guy put a
quick event together to get warm clothes and mostly blankets out there for people
to use now.
The great
thing is 13+ others didn’t something the same across the world as well at the
same time.
I call that
a successful week.
I have a lot
of new readers now so please if you would like, go to grantthepoliteguy.blogspot.com
for past posts before I started working as a Buffed shoe shiner.
Thank you
for reading my blog and I hope you all have a great day.
Grant the
Polite Guy
