Turia Pitt has been an inspiration to many for years, but her latest endeavour to help those impacted by the bushfires is seriously something to applaud.
The 32-year-old marathon runner and motivational speaker, along with her friend Grace McBride, started the initiative Spend With Them, to help support businesses affected by the devastating bushfires.
And in just a week, the ripple effect has been huge.
Turia Pitt has been overwhelmed by the support for her campaign, Spend With Them.
(Image: Instagram @turiapitt)What started as a small page to support businesses and an Instagram post has snowballed, and as Turia herself explained, “s— got real.”
“Within an hour, we had over 10k followers. Grace was fielding phone calls from the Today Show and The Project (I was still working out how to switch between my personal instagram account and the @spendwiththem account 😂). We worked until 11pm, answering every email and DM that came in,” she explained in a recent Instagram post.
“At 5am the next morning, we were overwhelmed. We had more than 50,000 followers. Hundreds of emails. Thousands of DMs. Kelly Rowland gave us a shoutout. That night, we went to bed at 2am. We didn’t get through all the emails or even a quarter of the DMs.”
Turia went on to say that by day three when the page had racked up over 150,000 followers, she and Grace were emotionally and physically drained and started saying yes to anyone offering their assistance.
“My sister-in-law. Mates from the surf. A friend’s mum. A copywriter in Sydney. Dani at @soda_sydney jumped on board and the legends at Westpac Group (@westpac) started helping us too,” she added.
The Spend With Them page has over 187,000 followers- and it’s only been up for 10 days!
(Image: Instagram @spendwiththem)Turia concluded her post saying, “To say it’s been a crazy week is an understatement. But we can’t thank you enough for the way you’ve supported these businesses. Who knew that purchasing a bar of goat milk soap or a jar of honey could have such an impact? The ripple effect has been enormous.”
She went on to share some individual good news stories, including that of a coffee roaster on the South Coast who’s made more sales in one day than he’d made in the entirety of his business and who has now employed three more people to help meet demand.
“None of it would be possible without your support. So, thank you. Truly,” she penned.
WATCH BELOW: Turia Pitt is pregnant with her second child. Post continues after video…
With the success of Spend With Them, Turia ended her post by admitting that she’s juggling her new project with her own business and upcoming book, as well as the impending arrival of her second child due in three weeks.
In fact, her famous friends weighed in on her busy schedule too.
“Turia. You are somethin’,” The Morning Show‘s Kylie Gillies commented.
The Project‘s Carrie Bickmore penned, “You’ve done your bit! Go have a lie down and rest while you can. (If you know how to!!!)”
Zoe Foster-Blake even joked, “Ol ‘Lazy Bones’ Pitt…”
Turia will welcome her second child this year.
(Image: Instagram @turiapitt)Turia’s Spend With Them initiative was motivated by the #GoWithEmptyEskies movement that’s encouraging people to travel to fire ravaged towns and buy their products in bulk.
“Once these fires are finally ‘over’, it won’t be over for many of the local businesses in fire-ravaged towns,” she explained in an Instagram post.
“A lot of these places (like my home in Mollymook, and Mallacoota, Kangaroo Island, Eden etc) rely on the tourist dollar for their very survival.”
