EastLink IT upgrade raises $9,550 for We Care Community Services

EastLink recently replaced desktop and laptop computers with new equipment at the EastLink Operations Centre in Ringwood.

EastLink's IT department cleaned up the de-commissioned equipment (including securely deleting and rebuilding hard drives).

As a fundraiser, the de-commissioned equipment was then sold to EastLink staff for personal use.

In total $9,550 was raised by EastLink and provided to We Care Community Services.

We Care Community Services is located in Dandenong and each year provides services to 11,000 local people experiencing hardship:

• The Helping Hand Centre provides food parcels, items of clothing, blankets, toiletries, school supplies, baby supplies, and much more, free of charge, to families in need on a regular basis. The centre is set up like a supermarket without checkouts.
• A weekly Playgroup which offers a safe and engaging environment for children to develop their skills as well as interact with others from the local community. It is an environment where parents and guardians are able to build their social connection and integration within the community.
• Weekly mentoring and positive lifestyle programs in a number of high schools assist students in dealing with anger, depression and other developmental issues. This is a great opportunity to help fringe students to reengage with school (and thus to stay in school) as well as helping them expand their social skills to better integrate into society.

The following image shows EastLink's presentation to We Care Community Services, with left to right: Rajpal Sidhu (EastLink IT), Bill Advic (EastLink General Manager IT), Alex Attard (We Care General Manager), Kelsey Richards (We Care Administrator), and Michelle Davis (EastLink IT):

This fundraising effort is in addition to other help that EastLink provides regularly to We Care Community Services:

• Collection of donated clothing and food for the Helping Hand Centre
• Employees provide a gold coin donation when they have personal packages delivered to EastLink's reception
• Left-over food from EastLink's on-site café each Friday afternoon is made available to employees for a gold coin donation (previously, left-over food was thrown out).