Gordon Brice from Donations In Kind (DIK) was our guest speaker for this week. Gordon was born in Tailem Bend, went to Tailem Bend Primary School and then furthered his schooling in Adelaide. Trained as an Electronics Technician and spent all his working life in that field. Interested in anything electronic or mechanical, restoring a 1951 MGTD.
Gordon married in 1970 and has 2 Son's and 3 Grandchildren. he moved to Lobethal in 1981 and joined the Onkaparinga Rotary Club in 1984 where he has held many positions on the committee. Gordon has been involved with DIK for 10 years.
What is DIK -
Donations In Kind Central Region is run jointly by both 9500 and 9520 Districts, soon to be D9510.
This year has been another productive year with completion of the projects specifically related to the Royal Adelaide Hospital (RAH) donation. The RAH project has continued to shine a spotlight on DIK and its operations at club, district, state levels.
Summary of Activities
Container projects completed: 11. Comprising 10 loaded at DIK warehouse and 1 RAH project loaded elsewhere.
Destinations: Philippines, Kurdistan, Egypt, Solomon Is, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Nepal, Myanmar, PNG, Zambia and Sierra Leone.
Standard containers shipped: 22 (20 foot equivalents)
Other international projects assisted: 6
Local bodies assisted: 20
Donations collected: 124
Donations in progress: 21
Donations not collected: 34
Freight costs saved for donations picked up by Rotarians: approx..$13,000
Joint district working bee (at DIK): 1
Logged volunteer hours: 3410
Total value of volunteer hours: $113,000 ($33/hr)
A total of 124 donations were collected during the year, with another 21 yet to be assessed/collected and 34 that were either declined or went to another charity.
DIK was headhunted by SA Health in 2016 to coordinate allocation of all goods going overseas. The bulk of the work was done in 2017-18 but a few projects carried over into 2018-19. We facilitated a total of 28 RAH Surplus Goods projects through Rotary and other charity group’s sponsored containers. This project is recognised as the largest single Rotary project in South Australia. The project has been recognised at District level as well as many Rotary clubs.
In a similar way, DIK has been approached by Calvary Wakefield Hospital for the potential surplus equipment in its move to the new Calvary Hospital. Initial meetings have been held, with the RAH experience giving Directors their comfort knowing that Rotary’s DIK team can well manage collection and disbursement of goods to needy communities. The volume of goods in this project is significantly less than the RAH project. With this smaller volume and lack of parking space at the old Wakefield Hospital, it is expected that all goods will be trucked to DIK warehouse for allocation to future projects as appropriate. This is anticipated to be in Jan-Feb 2020.
If this Club is intending to run a project we can help. You choose a project and destination, then apply to DIK for a copy of our Memorandum of Understanding. We will assist, with your physical input, from go to woe to bring that project to reality.