Telco Together’s first Skills Exchange event for 2017, generously hosted by Cisco at their Sydney office on Tuesday 4th July, attracted a large number of skilled volunteers from across the ICT industry keen to use their knowledge to give back to attending charities.
At the event, five charities presented a defined communications technology problem to our audience of skilled specialists from Cisco, Inabox Group, Ericsson, Commander, NBN and Equinix.
Attending charities which included Raise Foundation, TAD Disability Services, The Funding Network, Sisters Of Charity and Centennial Parks Foundation, who were thrilled with the unique opportunity to access a room full of ITC specialists keen to help out.
With many telco organisations now offering employees two days corporate volunteering leave annually, the Skills Exchange offers a new way for those interested in volunteering to get involved, via a well-organised, professional and facilitated environment.
Renee Bowker, CEO of Telco Together said; “The Skills Exchange series of events matches the strong need faced by many under-resourced charities to access free basic ITC advice and know-how, enabling them work through problems that are creating road blocks to their general ability to get on with what they do best, it really is is a win-win for all involved.”
Preliminary feedback from attending ITC specialists included; “The pitching style of this event helped us to clearly understand the challenges faced by each charity. Following on from this, the mingling worked well as we could then seek out each charity representative to find out more and initiate a plan of action to resolve their problem.”
“This opportunity really got me thinking about how to further enable linking the right skills with the needs of charities together… I am looking forward to further understanding the challenges of the charities I have identified with and how I can help them.”
One of the attending charity representatives commented; “Telco Together’s Skills Exchange was an excellent way for us to spread the word about our work to a new audience and to engage with specialist professionals whose skills are like gold-dust in our largely tech-ignorant sector. Charities need to be more innovative in the digital space and initiatives like this are helping us get there. Thank you.”
Problems presented by charities ranged from website upgrades to data management systems, cloud based IT infrastructure and more. The next stage of this event will be to encourage the specialists to engage with charities and follow up the outcomes over the next few weeks. Stay tuned for more information on upcoming Skills Exchange events.