Leading with heart
Community champion receives top volunteer honour.
Derryck Klarkowski, co-founder of We Care Connect (WCC) has been awarded the Newcastle Permanent Charitable Foundation 2024 Chairman’s Medal.
First presented in 2018 in honour of the late Michael Slater, who served as Chair of Newcastle Permanent Building Society and Newcastle Permanent Charitable Foundation for nearly ten years and spent more than 50 years volunteering his time and talents to local organisations, the Chairman’s Medal is recognition for an outstanding volunteer who sets aside their own priorities to better the community.
In WCC, Derryck has helped create an innovative, volunteer-led organisation that connects quality, unused childhood equipment and other essential goods to families in need.
From its humble beginnings in Wyong in 2016, the organisation has supported over 23,685 children experiencing poverty across the Central Coast and the Hunter, with the support of a 120-strong volunteer team and a referral network of 300 case workers from 100 social support agencies.
Derryck’s ability to inspire the community to donate generously and trust that their unused items are being put to good use is critical to WCC’s success. Consequently, over 645,000 items, or 250+ tonnes, of quality goods have been diverted from landfill.
Derryck’s “unwavering vision” is inspiring to all, and is credited with shaping the “incredibly passionate, tenacious and unstoppable” volunteer culture that drives WCC forward. While he holds the title of co-founder and CEO, Derryck is, first and foremost, a volunteer who has “led from the ground up”.
From the start, he has been involved with everything from repairing cots to creating an online ordering and database system for tens of thousands of records. He has built shelves and maintained the warehouse to keep costs down, and spent years collecting, transporting, cleaning, sorting, storing, and packing donations as the volunteer team grew. Since embarking on this “retirement project”, Derryck has regularly dedicated 5-7 days a week to help rewrite the future for children living in poverty.
The WCC initiative caps off a lifetime of service to the community for Derryck whose professional career as a medical laboratory scientist has resulted in valuable research on diagnostics, testing and quality control, especially in resource-limited settings. He has a special interest in immunohaematology, tropical medicine, and viral infections with multiple papers on HIV and malaria. Derryck’s work has taken him to the frontlines of trouble spots all over the world with Médecins Sans Frontières. He spent two years in Eritrea as an official Australian Volunteer and also lead Venturer Scouts and served with the Rural Fire Service.
Despite the challenges of starting a grassroots charity, Derryck never complains. He is prone to “seeing every challenge as an opportunity for a new approach and demonstrates an unflappable resilience to the day-to-day challenges of a charity CEO.” His ongoing commitment to giving back and building a powerful volunteer-led organisation is something to celebrate and support.
Heading into winter, WCC enters its biggest season for the number of children supported. Often families might be homeless or have limited heating at home, so they’re provided with blankets, doonas, oodies, slipper socks, flannelette sheets and pyjamas, as well as warm hoodies and trackies – anything that can take the edge off the cold.
WCC spokesperson Helen Barker says, “Last winter we were asked to provide winter warmers to 1,425 disadvantaged children. These included over 18,000 items of warm clothing, 1,700 blankets and doonas and 92 pairs of mittens/gloves. Recently we were asked to provide a blanket that is warm, but light to go into a backpack for a homeless teenager, and a warm doona for a 17-year-old mum to a new-born, currently living in a refuge with limited support.
These are circumstances that should be unthinkable, but they are the sad reality for thousands of local families. The good news is, we can respond to this poverty and disadvantage in a very practical way to provide some immediate relief.”
For further information visit https://wecareconnect.org.au/
Further information about the Newcastle Permanent Charitable Foundation can be found at https://www.newcastlepermanent.com.au/charitable-foundation
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