By Gabriella Vukman
As Christmas bells begin to jingle, the Gully Market has selected its next donation recipients in light of meeting the community’s needs this festive season.
With new funds surfacing due to updated management, this season’s donation recipients are Foothills Community Care, where funds will go towards covering their Christmas lunch and the restocking of the Ferntree Gully Salvation Army’s food bank.
New Upper Gully Market President Ian Rice said about the market’s newfound gold, “I just couldn’t understand what that money was doing there so I’m giving it away.”
Having previously donated to the CFA and the Ferntree Gully Angliss hospital among other local organisations, Mr Rice’s welcome dolloping of funds on his surrounding community is all part of a bigger picture.
“The market has been run down through bad management for the last few years and was having trouble attracting stalls and customers.”
“I thought I’ll use these donations to promote the market as well as promote the charity’s causes. Most importantly the store holders see where part of their stall fees are going.”
The Upper Gully market, located under the Upper Gully Carpark, welcomes visitors every weekend with store fees returning to grace the local community after the costs of running the market have been deducted.
“Hopefully a small percentage of the community will come back and support the market,” Mr Rice said.
The process of selecting each season’s donation recipients varies.
Mr Rice said, “we asked around for suggestions, the fire brigade was an obvious one first up for me because they get nothing. They have to beg, steal and borrow to get anything.”
“One of my store holders volunteers at the Foothills Community Care organisation one day per week and so I went down and spent a day there, spoke to the guy who set it up and I stayed around for a while speaking to volunteers and recipients and it was an eye-opener.”
“I went back to tell Foothills that we would cover the Christmas lunch that they put on. They usually feed around 220 people.”
The Foothills Community Care organisation also feeds upwards of 40 and 60 people during the week and has tables of fresh fruit and vegetables for people to take home.”
The other donation recipient, Ferntree Gully Salvation Army, received money towards their food bank.
“They have a food bank cupboard at the back of their building which is available 24 hours a day for people to take stuff,” Mr Rice said.
“They’ve got things that also need to be replaced like fridges and stuff like that.”
Mr Rice said that next year he will move on to donating to the SES and then the Fire brigade again.
