Charlie Gray Emergency Fund

Dear community, as many of you know already, our friend Charlie Gray is currently living a nightmare. Since September 4th when she found out that the love of her life, Australian born Will Mainprize, was presumed dead after the  ship he was working on disappeared in a Typhoon off the coast of Japan- to now- October 27th, in the middle of full-time Search and Rescue efforts in Australia to find him and the 39 other crew members still hoped to be alive- Charlie has not had a break emotionally, physically, financially, or mentally for over 7 weeks.

Charlie is a resilient, strong, justice driven woman with a huge heart for helping others. It can be seen in her nonprofit, youth, and social justice work, her community involvement wherever she goes, and how she has shown up not only for Will and his family and his friends, but for all of the families impacted by this disaster.  Unfortunately, this continues to be a very traumatic, expensive, overwhelming experience for her, and even the strongest among us are not immune to the mental and physical toll of so much tragedy and uncertainty.  She is exhausted. She needs  care.

We are calling on you, as friends or friends of friends of Charlie, to help take care of her immediate basic needs so that she can find some semblance of stability during this time of unfathomable grief while also allowing her to continue to search for the man she had planned to spend her life with (COME HOME SOON WILL!) 

With the completely heart wrenching reality of Will's disappearance, cost of emergency flights during COVID,  the added stress and difficulty of being in a new country without close friends or family to lean on, a $3000 quarantine, missed work due to the circumstances and being unable to work on her Compassionate Visa, and  the loss of her stable housing situation,  this woman needs a break in a big way.

Let us please help her feel even a small comfort during this truly horrific experience.

...

Some examples of where your contribution will go based on Australian living costs:

-$10-15 is a meal she doesn't have to worry about
-$50 is groceries for a few days
-$100 counselling support
-$250 will provide one week of accomodation in a private room where she can access wifi and a kitchen. 

The beauty is that no one person has to provide any of this alone. We have power in numbers! Thank you!

Some more background information:

At the time she received her last texts from Will half an hour before the ship went down, Charlie was living in Dahab, Egypt, her home and place of full-time work for the past three years. Will was set to join her there after his work on the ship was complete, where they would wait for Covid-19 travel restrictions to lift and move back to Oz together.

Instead, Charlie found herself flying to Australia by herself, having been granted emergency flight permissions and given a Compassionate Visa (which does not allow her to work) to enter the country in order to be with Will's family and loved ones.

Upon arrival Charlie had to spend her first two weeks in expensive government mandated quarantine facilities, without any physical contact or consolation. It was from here, alone in a hotel room that she began virtually conducting interviews with the press and petitioning for government support in Japanese search efforts.

When that was heartbreakingly unsuccessful, a campaign was launched to privately fund the Search and Rescue efforts, which Charlie has been dedicated to nonstop. She has been working with Will's family, close friends and maritime and SAR consultants and experts in NZ, Aus and Japan. Currently she is coordinating with the aviation SAR pilots and the NZ Team (and so many volunteers from around the world) focusing on satellite imagery and helicopter flights to hopefully find the men on one (or more) of the many small, uninhabited Japanese islands located near the accident site.

Links for more Information about the situation:

 Charlie Calls for Search Operation to Resume: Sky News Australia
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1piaI2i54I

Privately funded search continues: Safety At Sea (backstory)
https://safetyatsea.net/news/2020/privately-funded-search-continues-to-find-40-missing-crew-from-gulf-livestock-1/

Will's Brothers Talking about Search- October 25, 2020
https://twitter.com/theprojecttv/status/1320280251889569792?s=20&fbclid=IwAR0EQWnWPEqOu9H8uSbGSfYIvbTD8HnbeICNjD0GBd6FAXtkcGSVEYZmtOE