Thanks Canon Australia for your ongoing support and showcasing that helping a charity ‘behind-the-scenes’ (by supplying us with a printer and camera) is also important. Improving our day-to-day task efficiency means we can focus on getting devices out to people in need and providing more training opportunities for neurodivergent young adults.
This Neurodiversity Celebration Week, we want to highlight the incredible work that our 2024 Canon Oceania Grant Community Winner, The Reconnect Project, is doing every day. The Reconnect Project employs and trains neurodivergent young people in providing quality repair services for mobile phones, laptops, and tablets, and accept technology donations, which are distributed to people in desperate need. This incredible operation is designed to empower neurodivergent young people with practical skills in mobile phone repair, retail operations, and customer service. Earlier this month, members of our QSE team, Nina Spannari, General Manager – Sustainability and Peter Fischer, QSE Compliance Specialist, visited The Reconnect Project. Meeting with Annette Brodie, CEO and Founder, Aaron Vargas, Workshop Supervisor, Wilbur Donaldson, Technician, who has been at social enterprise since its inception, Daniel, Technician, and recent graduate of their repair program, and Emily Giles, Support Officer, who liaises with caseworkers needing devices for their clients, our team toured and caught up with The Reconnect Project team on how the Canon Oceania Grant has helped them with their important mission – to close the digital divide. The social enterprise last year received $2,500 in cash and our EOS R10 Single Lens kit as their Grant bundle. “The camera has helped us deliver training and Canon’s support has been fabulous, I don’t have time to focus on communications and PR, so Canon has given us an opportunity to get our name out there,” Annette said. Recently, to help their operations further, we also supplied The Reconnect Project team with a printer, which Emily, The Reconnect Project’s Support Officer, who liaises with caseworkers needing devices for their clients, has found helpful for their operations, “Our old printer regularly failed and wouldn’t connect to our laptops. Now with this new printer, I can print from anywhere in the hub and getting it connected to my laptop is so much easier.” Our team was also treated to a first-hand look at the repairing process in action, with Wilbur, Technician, delicately taking apart a donated device, “You have to be careful with the screws, it’s important to map them as you remove them,” gesturing to a memory mat next to him, “otherwise if I put the wrong screws back in, you could accidentally damage the circuit board and effectively destroy the product.” This was an incredibly rewarding experience for our team and being able to catch up with The Reconnect Project to see how far they’ve come – from 2,920 devices last year in October when we last visited to 3,405 devices that have been distributed to people in need across Australia. A huge thank you to Annette and The Reconnect Project team for inviting us back for a visit and we can’t wait to see what strides you make this 2025. To find out more, head to their website: https://lnkd.in/gVC_QSaj #CanonOceaniaGrants #NeurodiversityCelebrationWeek