Bethenny Frankel Stepping Up To Help Australia Fire Victims With BStrong Foundation — ‘It’s Horrible’

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Bethenny Frankel, 49, has left her Real Housewives Of New York days behind to focus on different projects, however, one thing still remains the same — Her passion to help others in times of need with her BStrong Foundation. When the successful SkinnyGirl mogul heard about the horrifying brushfires taking place in Australia, she knew she needed to step up and assist right away. “It’s so horrible,” Bethenny told HollywoodLife EXCLUSIVELY. “We took the whole weekend to really get organized because in relief work, people rush in and then have to sort of pull their plan together. You can’t really start raising money and execute a relief effort until you have a plan and who you’re going to help and how are you going to help them. So we started the actual active raise yesterday, and the number one priority is of massing fire gear and putting it into containers to ship there. We’ve got the stats on how many firefighters they have existing and how many volunteers there are. It’s really just like I wrote in my post, it’s a David and Goliath issue because there just aren’t nearly enough firefighters, even with all the volunteers, not much less outfitting them. So we are working on a plan also to get firefighters internationally into Australia to attack the fires and outfitting them with their gear. We did that in the Amazon and the California fires. I think we outfitted over 700 firefighters and we were there for three months.”

This is nowhere near Bethenny’s first time dealing with natural disasters, either. After receiving donations and raising funds while also assisting on the ground physically herself after the Puerto Rico earthquake and Hurricanes Dorian, Maria and Irma just to name a few, Bethenny has learned to take each disaster with a different plan of attack. “I don’t always know about everything first,” Bethenny said. “I was aware of The Bahamas really early. We were one of the first planes to come into Puerto Rico. Here, it started because I do have a fan base that Australia, so last week people started messaging me, “Are you going to do anything for Australia?” I wasn’t even really aware because it wasn’t being reported here as much, so I was having pleas from Australian fans. The thing is, with all the disasters that have been happening, it’s not very different than any other kind of charitable work because people working for other charitable causes are prepared all year.”

For now, Bethenny has customized a special plan outlined for her efforts in Australia. This includes giving BStrong gift cards at shelters, funding animal organizations on the ground that are saving animals, amassing fire gear from various fire departments in the US and sending containers of gear to equip volunteer firefighters for fire season which is another 3 months in Australia. Though her star power helps her get by with a little help from her friends, there’s one thing she’s always looking for when it comes to these kinds of efforts. “Number one plea is airlines,” Bethenny said of what she still needs. “Relief work is totally different because you’re not prepared. You don’t know what the disaster is, and in each disaster, even though we’ve worked with two different fires, each disaster because of where it is and what the dynamics are and there’s so many animals, has its own set of challenges. So you have to really kind of just jump in. You’re building a rocket while flying it.”

If you want to donate to Bethenny’s BStrong Foundation, you can do so here, and know that 100% of your donations are going straight to the people of Australia who need help in this time of need.