Readify rallies together to help Victorian Bushfire Victims

Thursday, 26 March 2009

Toni-Anne Collins is the HR Manager at Readify and along with her two daughters, Jess and Amy, is one of the hundreds of people who lost their homes and treasured belongings in the Black Saturday bushfires on 7 February 2009.

In an effort to show our support to all the victims affected by the February bushfires, Readify announced its bushfire fundraising campaign, whereby Readify would match all staff donations ‘dollar-for-dollar’. Many thanks go to those staff members who very generously donated towards the fund. We are very pleased to announce that from all the valuable contributions, Readify raised a total of $8,120 towards the 2009 Victorian Bushfire Fund.

But it doesn’t stop there... On Saturday 7 March, exactly one month since of the horrific fires swept through Victoria, an enthusiastic and hard working team of Readify staff, friends and family rallied together for a three-day working-bee at Toni-Anne’s one-hundred acre property in St Andrews. Over the Labour Day weekend, the team worked extremely hard in cleaning up the debris and managed to clear 4km of burnt-out wire fencing, cut down dangerous trees, salvage brick pavers for re-use and re-build a collapsed bridge on the property.

It was an extremely tough and exhausting job for all involved and our sincere gratitude and thanks go to all those who volunteered. In particular, to Ken Neff and the team at The GSA Group (http://www.gsagroup.com.au), who supplied all the machinery, equipment and coordinated the tasks and work effort. Without their generous contribution, the working bee wouldn’t have occurred.

“We had all the equipment and skills readily available to us so we worked out what we could do to help. Everyone did a fantastic job and we were able to accomplish everything we set out to do and even a little bit more.” – Ken Neff, The GSA Group

Very special thanks also go to Eat Your Heart Out, for three full days of fantastic catering to keep our team of volunteer’s on-the-ball and fighting fit! Peter and Bridgett Vogeli from Eat Your Heart Out (http://www.eyho.com.au), provide on-location catering often for film and TV crews and offered immediate catering support for the Salvation Army following the February fires in Whittlesea. The Salvo’s ran a 24-hour kitchen for three days feeding up to 1500 people at a time; so our group of sixty volunteers were very grateful to have them there.

We trust the end result of the weekend was a good start for Toni-Anne and her family, who will now start to rebuild their lives in St Andrews again.
 

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