Bid to raise $5000 to purchase paediatric equipment

This year Community Engine launched a pilot for their social commerce website in the Northern Rivers. The pilot has been successful and now the company is ready to expand its reach.

To say thank you to the Northern Rivers for hosting the pilot program and to help launch the community building tool nationally, Community Engine is giving away $100,000.00.

“Any not-for-profit organisation in the Northern Rivers can access this money” said Dean Power, who heads up Community Engine’s Northern Rivers office. “Any new followers of groups on the engine attract $1 each”.

Rebekka Battista, Fundraising Co-ordinator for Our Kids, is calling for everybody, their colleagues and friends, to follow Ours Kids on communityengine.com.au so they can raise $5,000.

“Community Engine is a great platform and it provides an easy way for people to help us financially” said Ms Battista. “We are desperately trying to raise money to purchase paediatric equipment for our local hospitals and this is a great way for people to show their support”.

“We have around 1,000 organisations using the engine” said Dean Power. “It’s been a joy connecting them all, as so many people previously felt that having an online presence or using e-commerce were beyond their reach. So far over 37 not-for-profit groups have signed up to raise money. If a group attracts 4,000 new followers we will give them $4,000. We will keep giving until the money is gone”.

communityengine.com.au is a website to help small businesses and community organisations find new customers and members, stay in touch with existing customers or members  and sell goods and services online, including special offers. For everyone else it’s a personal guide to information, products and services from businesses and community groups they are interested in.

“The Northern Rivers was chosen as the place to start the engine because it’s a region of villages and people here have held onto their village values” said Dean Power. “Community Engine makes it easy to promote and sell online in a way that also reinforces a sense of community. Essentially, we are about putting business back into the community and community back into business”.

The tool is free to use with only a small fee for processing payments (4.5% for community groups, 6.5% for business).

To follow Our Kids and help them raise $5,000 go to communityengine.com.au  Search for Our Kids and then click to “follow” them. Then share with your networks – email, facebook, twitter.

Internationally renowned artist Angus McDonald will join friends and guests at The Byron at Byron Resort and Spa on August 9th to discuss the art world he inhabits and how it has changed.

“Art evolves constantly and is a mirror reflecting the era we live in” said McDonald. “What is art for the artist, the art lover, the art world. Why do we make it and collect it? What makes a piece of art a piece of art? What is all the fuss about anyway?”

Celebrated Australian identity Tim Olsen, of the Tim Olsen Gallery in Sydney, will introduce Angus and give an introductory talk on collecting art and growing up in the art world.

The walls of The Byron at Byron on Thursday August 9 will be adorned with paintings from Angus’s private collection as well as some of his own work.

“Angus was always a much better drawer than me” said Olsen. “And he didn’t even do art as a subject. He was studying to become an economist and businessman and I was the one who was becoming an artist. It has all turned out the wrong way around! Angus is an incredible draftsman who is able to translate his understanding of light and shade and tonality. He is one of the most underrated still life artists in Australia today. His still lives are not just pictures adorned with pots and drapery, intermingled with fruit. They are conversations or stories about how things interrelate in space. Each object relates with one another in a way that there is a conversation…. saying do I really belong here.

“As a person Angus has always been a wylie character, a maverick, completely unpredictable. He’s a loyal friend and a talented artist that I am proud to have within my stable”.

Born in Sydney in 1961, McDonald studied full time at the Julian Ashton Art School in Sydney for three years, receiving the Brett Whiteley Scholarship in 1994. He was a finalist in the NSW Travelling Art Scholarship in the same year. He then lived and worked on the Greek Island of Leros between 1996 and 2001 and attended the Florence Academy in Italy in 1999/2000. Since 1995 he has held 25 solo exhibitions in Australia, Japan and the UK. He was an Archibald Prize finalist in 2009, 2011 and 2012 and has been selected in numerous other prizes including the Dobell, the Country Energy, the Blake, the JADA Drawing Prize and the Australian Studio Furniture Design Awards. He has travelled twice to Antarctica, first as an expedition artist for the Mawson’s Huts Foundation in 2006 and as the artist in residence with Aurora Expeditions in 2008.

Angus lives and works in Lennox Head on the New South Wales North Coast. To view his work visit www.timolsengallery.com

Byron at Byron Presents Angus McDonald and Tim Olsen

7:00pm Thursday August 9, The Byron at Byron Resort and Spa

$70 for two courses, a glass of wine and Angus. Stay the night from $285 for two people.

Bookings essential. 02 66392105 or reservations@thebyronatbyron.com.au