When lockdown hit all of regional NSW for the second time, one woman came up with a way for her Riverina town to rally around their local businesses when they were forced to shut their doors.
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Hay's Stacey Deacon had the idea of organising a group to help businesses after seeing her nieces and friends on "dipping pages", another term for raffles.
Soon, Chloe Deacon and Tyler Smith were on board to help out, and the Hay's Local Lockdown Fun group was started.
"Stacey thought that we could use this sales method to help keep our local businesses afloat," she said.
"We wanted to start it, so we didn't see the businesses we all love die and the closure of our town's heart and soul.
"We just wanted to keep our local businesses flowing by helping them pay their rent, mortgages, keeping food on the table and roofs over their heads."
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Chloe explained the social media page runs like a raffle, where each business posts a product and keen buyers can join in with "post dips".
"Say it's $100, we can change that to 20 tickets at $5 each and every person that wants tickets comments, and they are assigned a number," she said.
"Payments are then made to each business house directly and once all tickets are sold and paid for each seller comments on their post "all paid and ready to draw"."
Then each evening, the women will sit down and go live in the social media group with a spin the wheel app to draw winners for each draw. The seller then organises the delivery.
Chloe said the response to the group has been "amazing" and now has more than 800 members.
Stacey said while she was the one who had the idea, the accomplishments of the page came down to Hay's community spirit.
"The success goes entirely to the local community for getting on board to support their businesses," she said.
Wednesday night's raffle alone totalled more than $6000, and the page has put more than $42,000 back into the community. It's expected they will hit the $50,000 mark in the coming days.
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