FinancialForce4Good – Lending a helping hand at Sydney Homeless Connect
Giving back to the community is what Certinia4Good is all about. For three of us at the Certinia office in Sydney, being able to help out at the Sydney Town Hall at Sydney Homeless Connect was a great experience.
One of our Sydney support engineers, Peter Worth, commented how rewarding standing in a hallway on security duty for 4 hours could be:
“It was an eye opener to discover how far off the mark my image of homeless people was. While my role was really just standing there giving directions, the gratitude expressed to me showed that even the smallest amount of help was appreciated.”
Krishna Gudluru, who works on the technical help desk also on the Sydney support team, was pleasantly surprised when a participant asked for assistance managing her smartphone apps, quickly launching into a conversation on creating domains, hosting a web site and using WordPress.
My role, which was helping on the catering team with lunch service, was both exhausting and exhilarating. With a team of about 30 people we served 700+ roast lunches at 6 tables in just over two hours. The gratitude from our guests made it really rewarding. A gentleman named Peter had asked to compliment the Chef on the quality of the meal, and then personally went to the kitchen and thanked him. While we had a 3 hour window to serve lunch, the Cafe was serving hot pies, rolls, salads, tea, hot chocolate and even had a barista serving Espresso coffees, not to mention the Bunnings team were pretty popular with their barbecued sausages on rolls.
What made the event even more special were the many organisations donating their time and services. Everything from hairdressers to solicitors, massage therapists to restaurateurs, fire brigade to dentists and more all happily (with lot’s of smiles) doing what they could to help.
It was a great day giving back. Thank you, Sydney Homeless Connect!
