Club Cares Mission
Providing relief of poverty, distress, misfortune, destitution or helplessness to those in the community who have a need for assistance due to lack of financial resources, disability, sickness or otherwise by the provision of subsidised housing, improvements, renovations and alterations to housing, medical equipment, aids for the disabled and medical expenses thereby improving the quality of life of the recipients or providing material assistance to improve their lifestyle.
Club Cares is a registered charity set up by Property Club to fund worthwhile projects locally, nationally and internationally. Overseen by a board of trustees, Club Cares joined forces with the Red Cross to become a major sponsor of one of their larger projects based in Brisbane.
Through tax deductible donations from the public and corporate partner members’ donations, Club Cares is able to maximise investments that will create a reliable and constant income stream.
Club Cares goal is to assist recipients by immediately improving their quality of life. In addition our longer term goal is to work with recipients to help them better manage their own financial affairs for their future, enabling them to become self-sufficient.
Club Cares has no overheads meaning that every dollar raised and donated goes directly to those in need. Kevin Young and his wife Kathy pay all wages, salaries and overheads.
How Club Cares Began
At a Property Millionaires Conference in Fiji many years ago Kevin Young and Kathy Young heard a beautiful story from PMC Member Neil Munday that set alight a desire to help those less fortunate than themselves.
Neil and Colleen Munday – Founders of Club Cares
In 1993 we had decided to try and get ahead as a family. We bought our first investment house and started having family meetings. When our two daughters, Elizabeth and Jane then aged 12 & 9 asked the question at one of our weekly family meetings “why don’t we have a brother?” my answer was that they were lucky to be two beautiful sisters. From this conversation, it was decided that we would sponsor a boy in another country. We chose Ethiopia and contacted Child Fund Australia and received a grainy black and white photo of a generic looking rejected boy called Fikadu.
The girls wrote a letter and sent their photos and Fikadu wrote back. This started an eleven year cycle of letters and photos sharing our life and his through the ups and downs. Fikadu was a great soccer player until he badly burned his left hand when a kerosene lamp exploded in their hut. But he kept going to school and writing letters.
In 2004 we travelled to Ethiopia to see our boy who had now become a young man. It was an exciting trip to a world so different from ours. Poverty and hardship were everywhere, but also wonderful people and amazing things to see. We met Fikadu and one of his brothers and spent two days with them. We cried when Fikadu opened his wallet to show us pictures of our girls that he had kept there.
We asked Fikadu what we could do for him to help him now, he reminded us he had formed a band some time ago and made money singing and playing at weddings and parties. He told us that he would like an electronic keyboard. We came home and organized the money for the keyboard and also sent money for the brother to get his taxi drivers licence. We thought this would be the end of the story but we continued to correspond and to our delight and admiration found that Fikadu and his band gained a modicum of success, winning a national song competition and appearing several times on Ethiopian television. Our lives have been changed by our journey with a boy from across the sea. Our trip to Ethiopia showed us how money to support a child can go out beyond the individual and help the whole community.
