Community Sponsorships
Charitable Donations
The Greater currently supports the following charitable organisations:
Heal for Life Foundation
Empowering people to heal from childhood trauma and abuse
The Greater Building Society has continued to support the nation's only private healing centre for victims of child abuse.
As well as financial support, the Greater provides in kind staff support in areas such as business administration, IT and printing services. The Greater also produced some fundraising TV commercials for Heal for Life (previously known as Mayumarri) and staff regularly carry out fundraising and undertake voluntary work at the centre.
Since Mayumarri began in 1999, more than 4,000 men, women and children have attended healing weeks at the centre's adult retreat and Kids Kamp. Reports show that in Australia one in four girls and one in seven boys are sexually abused before the age of 16.
Donations to Heal for Life can be made at any Greater branch.
Visit www.healforlife.com.au
Wesley Lifeforce
Computer donation helps those helping others
The Greater's long standing support of the work of Wesley Mission continued this year. The Greater is a major sponsor of its suicide prevention program. Lifeforce aims to educate, empower and resource Australian communities to be aware of the issues of suicide.
A number of not-for-profit organisations also received a welcome helping hand following the donation of 40 second hand computers to Wesley Mission Newcastle. The Greater had just completed a major upgrade to its computer systems and was able to donate the computers that were being replaced.
The computers were refurbished by Wesley Mission's Work For the Dole (WFD) Computer E-Recycling Program and then passed on to local organisations. The WFD scheme aims to give practical skills to long term unemployed people to better prepare them for entering the work force. Participants in the computer recycling teams are trained in various aspects of computer building and refurbishment. They learn how to strip a PC of all its components, rebuild it, install software and conduct basic trouble shooting.
Once the computers are successfully rebuilt, they are donated to other needy organisations including high schools, Centrelink offices, counselling services, disability services and historical societies. Local people gain valuable skills training and organisations receive infrastructure to help them get on with the business of helping others.
Since 2001, when the WFD E-Recycling computer scheme began, Wesley Mission has refurbished between 500 and 3,000 computers per year, depending on donations. As well as being able to support local organisations, Wesley has sent over 500 refurbished computers to education facilities in India and over 300 to Peru.
Visit www.wesleymission.org.au/centres/lifeforce
Samaritans
Supporting those caring for people
The Greater continues to support the outstanding work carried out by the Samaritans by acting as a collection agency for its Christmas and Winter appeals. The Greater also printed a range of Samaritan's materials at a cost of approximately $30,000 this year.
The Samaritans Foundation is the welfare agency of the Anglican Diocese of Newcastle. It is one of Australia's largest regional welfare organisations providing more than 118 services to about 60,000 people annually in the Hunter Valley, Manning and Central Coast regions.
These services are provided in the areas of children, youth, family, community development, disability, employment, health promotion, recycling of donated clothing and emergency relief services.
Visit www.samaritans.org.au
HMRI
Greater with researchers for first 10 years
The Hunter Medical Research Institute (HMRI) celebrated its tenth anniversary this year. In that short space of time, HMRI has grown to become the third largest medical research institute in NSW.
When HMRI was established in 1998, the concept of a virtual, multi campus institute with researchers located on eight different campuses was unheard of. Now, research institutes in New South Wales and Western Australia, are modelling themselves on HMRI.
The HMRI model of collaboration between biomedical researchers who work in laboratories and clinical researchers who treat patients in hospitals, has enabled patients to benefit from the latest treatments and medical knowledge.
HMRI has also impacted on the health of the region's economy, attracting government and philanthropic funding to the region. In 10 years, HMRI has distributed more than $22 million in funding and in kind support to Hunter researchers. Corporate and individual donations from the Hunter community have funded many promising pilot studies, which have gone on to attract sustained funding from government and made a lasting impact on health. Some have also resulted in commercialisation opportunities.
Associate Professor Darren Shafren and his team have demonstrated the effectiveness of a common cold virus (Coxsackievirus A21) as a treatment to kill melanoma cells, both in laboratory tests and animal models. They began to investigate this exciting lead with the support of research funding from the Greater Building Society. The results of this research led to the establishment of a biotechnology company to commercialise this anti-cancer technology which is currently undertaking human trials.
Visit www.hmri.net.au or watch a brief news item on HMRI
