Business fund a boost for university students and community charities

Aspiring university students and community charities from Gunnedah will benefit from grants by GBP Cranes & Heavy Haulage.

A partnership between GBP and Boggabri Coal helped raised $7100 for the Gunnedah community. GBP agreed money raised from hire of their training room by Boggabri Coal would go toward local organisations and initiatives.

GBP Cranes & Heavy Haulage general manager Damien Roman said this funding formed part of its wider support of the Gunnedah region through sports club sponsorships, golf day donations and Christmas appeals.

“As a family-established and run business, GBP Cranes & Heavy Haulage has been committed to support local businesses and charities for close to 50 years,” he said.

“I have worked closely with our administrative team to establish new ways to expand our financial support for our community charities – utilising our training room to support our business partners and at the same time together we have raised more than $7000 which has been donated to our local charities along with two university scholarships for local year 12 school leavers.

“It is a great pleasure to be in a position to provide financial support to needing local charities.”

Boggabri Coal training coordinator John Fisher said the funding agreement made a lot of sense and will be of invaluable assistance to the Gunnedah community.

“This is a great training area, so when they said ‘if you use our facility we’ll donate all funds to charity’, we were very keen to get on board,” he said.

Part of the funds will provide two $1000 grants under the new GBP Scholarship Fund.

The inaugural program will offer a helping hand to Gunnedah students starting out in tertiary education.

The scholarship is open to all Gunnedah secondary school students who have been accepted into a university course. Funds can be used for tuition fees, living away from home costs, relocation expenses and text books.

The Salvation Army in Gunnedah was also provided a $1000 grant to assist its work in the welfare space in the local community.

Peter Hall from the Salvos said the funding will be a great help to people in need.

“It helps to keep our doors open,” he said. “Power prices are going up, grocery bills are increasing … it’s getting tougher for a lot of people.”

The grant will supplement the Salvos’ free financial counselling service in Gunnedah, its twice-weekly drug and alcohol counselling service, help fund a local caseworker as well as a free food pantry and food rescue service, among other plans.

“This will help us continue to provide those services,” he said.

Additional funds were also awarded to Can Assist Gunnedah ($1000), Allawah Cottage ($1000), The Rotary Club of Gunnedah ($500) and Gunnedah Lions Club ($500). A further $1100 will support fundraising events throughout this year including $220 which is already allocated to GS Kidd Memorial School charity golf day fund raiser.