18 May 2007, Sydney Australia
Friday 18th, May 2007 was an incredible day for the Australian team at Claffy House. Leading up to the event there had been a lot of anticipation and eagerness to get involved with the Salesforce.com Foundation and start representing down under! Claffy House was the chosen venue for the highly skilled painters, gardeners, landscapers and kick boxers that make up the multi talented Aussie Team. Thanks to GJ for connecting with United Way Sydney who did a fantastic and seamless job coordinating the project. This was a project organized through their Corporate Connect program.
Claffy House provides safe, short term crisis accommodation (8 to 10 weeks) to woman and children who are homeless due to domestic violence, relationship breakdown and/or family breakdown. The house can accommodate up to 16 woman and 30 children. Claffy House provides residents with assistance in locating more stable, long-term accommodation, support, case work, advocacy and child support services as well as referrals to other agencies. The facility at Burwood (Sydney's West near Mark Ringrose's place) needed a painting job and the playground was in desperate need of weeding and maintenance.
The day kicked off with torrential (and much needed) rain so the team immediately grabbed the paint brushes. Tony ‘cut master' Pilic quickly informed the team that we had to cut in the walls before we could begin painting. Other than Mark ‘can landscape' Ringrose no one had a clue what Tony meant by cutting in! Cutting in (which would turn out to be a novelty event for all volunteers) is taping up the edges of the walls so you produce a smooth finish. Well! By the end of the day John ‘pure cutting talent' Gilman, Tomasz ‘Michelangelo' Oczapowski and Thomas ‘born to cut' Karemacher had produced what most would call a master piece. The edges were perfect, the walls were smooth and the emotions one felt from walking through that hallway were indescribable.
Moving on the team attacked the bathrooms with Matt Cameron instructing the team on how to clean the walls using methods from his kickboxing days like ‘wax on wax off'...
GJ, John ‘gangsta' Perumal and Barry took up the technique and did an amazing job.
Anna Kovtoun, Dawn Bloxwich, Isabelle Kalinauckas, Sara Dobias and Helen Tamaki focused on the details that really made a difference to the overall finish. Using brush strokes that a male could never master.
Mark was in his element and no he was not running nude in the ‘city to surf'. Mark attacked the garden and children's play area with a vengeance backed up by John Stevjana and few of the cutters.
Claffy House was changed forever and so were the Salesforce.com team. We had a blast and look forward to our next foundation event.
Thomas Karemacher, Corporate Sales AE