In 2007, we swapped our pet rock Oscar for a $41,000 car for a Brisbane charity called Youngcare. It took 16 weeks but was a lot of fun. You can find the story of Oscar on this site. But it’s now time to help another charity – Paradise Kids. This charity is amazing and helps kids from all sorts of places deal with grief and loss. It also helps their families. In 2009-2010, we’ve got two projects planned. Please be a part of one of them.

Our Latest project: The Paradise Kids' Book

Every kid has a story to tell. So we want kids (and mums and dads) throughout Australia to write a short story … straight from their heart. Sadly, many kids and their families have lost loved ones or been affected by family break ups, drugs or other troubles. Writing your story can help. But it’s not all sadness. There’s also happy stories to tell. Ones where you may have been sick and beaten the illness. Or your mum and dad may have managed to do something heroic. We want to read all those stories. We will then choose the best short stories until we get around 10 of them together. See The Book hotlink for an extract of our first young writers. Two mums are also writing their stories at present - so parents can write their story too! As the stories come in, we’re going to be knocking on the doors of publishers to find one brave enough to bring all the stories together in a book (maybe even with some pictures if the writers agree). We reckon a book called Little Australians - or similar - would be a winner. All the money from the book sales will go to Paradise Kids. So get writing but before you do, email us so we can talk a bit about your story and to give you some writing style ideas. Email us today. Or phone mum and dad on 0419 431599.

Operation ShoeBox

This one is easy. We want anyone in Australia to take 10 minutes from their busy day, to change how a kid feels about themselves. We have registered a post office box on the Gold Coast (PO Box 701, Broadbeach, QLD 4218) and invite anyone to send a small present via land mail (that’s cheaper!) to the PO Box. Don’t wrap the present. We’ll do that. All you need to do is find a small gift (that fits into a shoebox), put a card in with the gift, and post it unwrapped to our PO Box. Our ShoeBox hotlink has several age brackets you can choose from. Have a look. On your card, please write a general message, like “Wishing you the best today and tomorrow, Love the Thompsons of Brisbane’’. That way, the present can be given out anytime throughout the year. Our job (dad’s and mum’s!!) will be to check the PO Box, check the presents, put them and your card into empty shoeboxes, wrap them nicely (not dad!!) and drop them at Paradise Kids’ head office. Our target is 100 presents by March next year. If we make that target before hand, we may even try to get to 400! The kind families sending presents can go to the ShoeBox hotlink and see their name there (under the age group they chose) as we’ll keep that as a register. What a quick way to make yourself – and someone you don’t know – feel a whole lot better. So good luck.

Our current present count is: 9

 Bye

Hannah and Luke
 

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