By Jackson Russell
A young Hidden Valley resident has been doing his bit to help struggling farmers, raising nearly $1000 by running his neighbours’ bins.
Twelve-year-old Ethan Liddy has donated a total of $869.20 for Buy a Bale by charging his neighbours 50 cents to ride to their house and put their bins out every Thursday night.
Ethan’s parents Jo and Paul Liddy also match every $100 that Ethan donates.
Ethan said he came up with the idea after watching the Hay Mate fundraising concert in 2018.
“I realised how much the farmers needed help with the drought so I asked myself, ‘What if I do a bin run in my street to raise money to donate to help them?’” he said.
Many of his neighbours have generously donated more than the 50 cents, with some contributing $30 or $50 at times.
Ethan started with three neighbours but it has quickly expanded to six and he hopes to do his bin run for the whole street.
“Now I’ve got six on board and I’m hoping to get pretty much the whole street on-board so I can raise as much money as possible,” Ethan said.
“Five of the houses have given me an extra $3 every time and one of the houses didn’t ask me to do their bins but they donated $30 to it.
“Next door actually gave me an extra $50 because they thought the farmers might need a little extra help.”
Ethan’s next goal is to raise a total of $5700, which is the cost to send a full semi-trailer of hay to farmers suffering from drought.
Mr Liddy said he and his wife were proud of what Ethan’s accomplished.
Ethan hopes to start more fundraising projects, including starting a food bank, busking and a charity concert.
