CatholicCare Drop-in Centre Springwood has been selected as the next project under our Green Community’s Program. We are raising funds for the supply and installation of a 11kW solar system at the Drop-in Centre’s premise at 163 Macquarie Road, Springwood NSW.

The Drop-in Centre was established in 2013 after the Winmalee bushfire. Originally it was to be a temporary service to provide counselling services, emergency food specifically for people affected by the impact of the bushfire (which resulted in the loss of 194 homes in Winmalee and Yellow Rock).

However, it soon became apparent that the Centre’s services were needed more generally for people outside the bushfire affected areas. It now services the mid and lower Blue Mountains communities with:

• Gambling & financial counselling
• Family & relationship counselling
• General counselling including zoom & phone counselling services

AMCP is a project to educate community members on climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies. The program is designed to empower people to take action on climate change in their daily lives.

The program is designed to show participants how to:

• Calculate their carbon footprint.
• Understand how to read their energy bill.
• Reduce their energy costs.
• Passively cool & heat their home.
• Design garden plantings for a warmer climate.
• Work out the business case for renewables.
• Become carbon neutral.

AMCP is a program that can be presented face-to-face or via zoom. It can be run a day long workshop or as a 6-part zoom series of 1 hour each.

Please contact us to find out more about AMCP.

Object: To install a 7.9kW solar sytem on the roof of Gateway Family Services, a charity located in Blaxland, NSW. The project also included the supply and installation of a Tesla Powerwall 2.0 Battery.

The project was completed successfully in October 2020. The solar system is now generating 8 megawatt hours of power annum.

Gateway’s mission is to support families by helping to strengthen relationships between parents/carers and their children. All families can build resilience, belonging, safety for all children with the right support at the right time. Gateway also offers emergency assistance programs for individuals, couples and families; giving food, vouchers towards power and water bills, Christmas hampers; information about community support services.

To raise funds for the project, the same process was utilized, with one dollar of every carbon offset sold by Ecoprofit (making businesses and households carbon neutral) donated to Sunshine Project for Community Inc. SPFC successfully submitted grant applications to both Federal and State governments to help get the project completed. A special thank you to both governments and in particular, Macquarie MP, Susan Templeman and Blue Mountains MP, Trish Doyle who so ably supported the applications.

Object: To install a 5kW solar system on the roof of Earth Recovery, a not-for-profit organisation created to nurture social justice projects and the environmental concerns of the community.

Ecoprofit, working with the Katoomba Rotary Club, successfully raised the $6,000. One $ of each carbon offset sold by Ecoprofit was donated for the solar system.

​Rotary International matched dollar for dollar money raised effectively donating half the funds. Funding was also received from Rotary International, Bendigo Bank, BMRenew, Kerry Brown on behalf of the Blue Mountains City Council, the Ramsay family, Theo Poulos Real Estate and many other small businesses and households.

​At the cutting of the ribbon ceremony, Rosa del Ponte, director of Earth Recovery, thanked Sunshine Project, the Uniting Church for the support

given to allow the agency to operate and Rotary for the solar panels which would power the community kitchen and support facilities. State MP, Trish Doyle, acknowledged the critical work Earth Recovery provides to the Blue Mountains community. She also acknowledged the great work by Winton Evers and Sunshine Project to “make the project happen”.

The projected annual energy cost saving to that organisation is $1,500 per annum initially, increasing year on year. Now free sunshine can be the energy source for a significant part of their energy consumption.

Ecoprofit donated $1 for each carbon offset it sold towards funding the solar system in the process of making its business clients carbon neutral. The majority of the offsets were acquired through the Clean Development Mechanism standard with the majority of the offsets acquired for the construction of 7.52 MW bundled solar facilities in Madhya Pradesh, India. Advantages of the project include:

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• Per annum it will displace 11,278,000 kWh of coal fired generated electricity.
• The project activity will lead to alleviation of poverty by generating additional employment, investment in the region and contribution to provision of basic amenities to people in the Madhya Pradesh district.

Object: to install a 20kW solar system on the Q Block of Wentworth Falls Public School.

The first Sunshine Project was to assist Wentworth Falls Public School P&C fund, procure and install a 20kW solar system on the roof of Wentworth Falls Public School. The project also included the creation of a teachers’ aide to show the Wentworth Falls Public School kids how the solar system works. A logger was included in the project to monitor all electricity flows from the system to the school and to the grid. Students are able to monitor the system performance by simple access to the laptops used for student tuition.

The project was completed successfully with additional funding from the Community Building Partnership grants program in 2018 (a special mention to MP Trish Doyle for supporting our grant application).