DonorTec's Impact: Community centre gains that cutting edge

Evolving from community action and very humble beginnings in 1974, the Bowden Brompton Community Group Inc has grown into a mature organisation, providing support services including adult education programs, housing services, and informal recreational and pleasure activities.

The community group was established to: serve the needs of the community as determined by the community; encourage community growth; provide community services; address housing issues; develop programs and facilities for the local community; and provide life-skills and adult community education programs.

In March 2007, through the DonorTec program, the community group received Cisco goods, and in 2008 they received further Cisco, Microsoft, and Bytes of Learning products, enabling them to set up their own server linking all computers.

Group manager, Isabelle Dabrowski, said the donations had been ‘fantastic’.

“Two years ago I attended CISA’s Connecting Up conference and learned about what they were implementing with the DonorTec program…Since then I’ve expounded their virtues to anyone and everyone who will listen!”

She said a young computing student who was studying for his Cisco accreditation used the centre as a study project and brought the community centre “up-to-the-minute and complete technologically.”

Ms Dabrowski said the centre would soon provide attendees with passwords, so that they could use the internet, or email, and then pay for their usage at the end of their visit.

“This gives a real edge because people in our community will also be able to use us as a ‘wireless’ hot spot, by using their own laptops with our wireless connection to the internet and email service,” she said.

“We teach everything from basic computing through to how to use the latest software Microsoft provides. The donations mean that we are now able to train people to use the latest operating systems.”

Ms Dabrowski said that the group’s “internal operations” had also become cutting edge.

“We were really struggling before we found out about the DonorTec system” she said. “We are amazingly thankful to DonorTec, Microsoft and Cisco.”