40 years helping Warburton

Kathy Kearns of Adcare Community Op Shop in Warburton. 188913_01

By Michael Doran

The links between Warburton and the Seventh Day Adventist Church are well recorded and one of those links, The Adcare Community Op Shop, is continuing its good work within the community.

The Op Shop has made a $1000 donation to the Children’s First Foundation Australia to support the recently separated Bhutan twins, Nima and Dawa. Team Leader Kathy Kearns said the group at the shop had been following the story and were moved to help out with their aftercare.

“We were quite aware of the twins and their family and felt compelled to help,” she said. Our donation will go towards the aftercare for the twins from the operation and for when they return home to Bhutan.”

“We currently have two charity projects overseas that we help out. In Thailand we give to a school and in Cambodia we gave a donation to build some incinerators used for burning hospital waste.

“We have been in Warburton for more than 40 years and the need for our services is growing all the time. We get a lot of referrals from the Redwood Centre, particularly in winter when homeless people are most at risk.”

“We help out women from the Benwerrin refuge with furniture, money or whatever they need to get back on their feet. We give support to the people in need who use LinC and the Redwood Centre, we help anyone who needs it.

“We have set aside a special area for single mothers to come in that has a little carpeted area where their kids can play. We say that for any child up to eight years old they can buy 10 items for $5 and we have lots of items to choose from.

The biggest problem we have is people dumping rubbish, especially mattresses, which they usually leave right under the “No Mattresses’ sign. It costs us a lot of money that we could otherwise have used to help people in need.” That might be a simple way for the community to help sustain the work of this long-running Warburton charity.