Air Conditioners Split System Air Conditioners from $640 Room A/C units from $459	Community Doug Smith Spares is proud to be involved with various charities and community initiatives. Below are just some of the initiatives we have been involved with, and we look forward to continuing to help out our communities in whatever way we can.  ______________________________  Loud Shirt Day 2011 Why Get Loud? Deafness is the most common diagnosed disability in newborns. Each and every year more than 1000 deaf babies will be born in Australia. Childhood illness can also result in the loss of hearing, so the number of deaf children needing support becomes much higher. Approximately 40% of deaf children have additional disabilities to cope with as well. From birth, hearing is essential to the development of spoken language skills. The window to stimulate the brain pathways for speech is limited so early intervention is critical. It is so important that we teach these hearing impaired babies to listen and speak as early as possible to ensure their integration into the hearing world. The ears are only the way in, the brain is the organ that stimulates the pathways needed for babies and children to acquire natural, clear, spoken language. It costs a minimum of $10,000 per annum to provide each child with these transformational services. With minimal government funding, we rely on support from the community through fundraising initiatives like Loud Shirt Day. Deaf babies can't wait!   About Loud Shirt Day Loud Shirt Day is a great way to throw off the usual dress code in your office or school and get loud for one day a year. Participants drag out their craziest shirts, socks, scarves or any other "LOUD" fashion statement. Everyone who participates makes a donation (anything over $2 is fully tax deductible) and all money raised will help get "deaf kids talking" throughout Australia. Your participation in Loud Shirt Day, will raise vitally needed funds to help deaf children across Australia reach their listening, language and speech milestones. This will allow them to attend their local school with their hearing siblings and peers, contribute to their community and reach their full potential within the hearing world. Loud Shirt Day is an initiative of  "deaf kids talking". This alliance is made up of five organisations throughout Australia, whose aim is to support deaf and hearing impaired children throughout Australia so they can learn to hear, listen and speak. The money raised in each State will be used to support local children and families.  How to Donate You can donate two ways, by either visiting one of our stores and placing money in the donation boxes, or online. Being in two states we are supporting two charities: New South Wales: To Donate Click Here The Shepherd Centre is a charity which began in 1970 helping deaf and hearing-impaired children learn to listen and speak so they can reach their individual potential. Over 30% of children attending our early intervention program have additional disabilities to hearing loss. We provide our services free of charge to families and only receive limited government funding, we rely heavily on the generosity of the community to help us continue to make a difference.   Queensland: To Donate Click Here The Hear and Say Centre is one of the leading Paediatric Auditory-Verbal and cochlear implant centres in the world, teaching children who are deaf or hearing impaired to listen and speak since 1992. The Centre aims for its children to achieve speech and language in the normal range for their age by six years of age giving them the opportunity for a mainstream education, employment of choice and social integration with the hearing world. The Centre is a charity based in Brisbane with regional centres on the Gold Coast, Sunshine Coast, Cairns, Townsville and Toowoomba with an Outreach program for rural and remote children. It is a family based program recognizing the parent as the natural language teacher of the child.      ______________________________ $860 raised for Worlds Greatest Shave Since 1998, World’s Greatest Shave has raised in excess of $106million. Every hour, someone in Australia is diagnosed with leukaemia, lymphoma or myeloma, and every two hours, someone dies from one of these blood cancers. The money raised is used by the Leukaemia Foundation to fund services to support patients and families living with leukaemias, lymphomas, myeloma and related blood disorders. This fundraising also funds blood cancer research to find better treatments and cures. Jason Masters, the Manager of our Burleigh heads bravely donated his hair this year, and with the assistance of staff and customers he's raised a total of $860. Please join us in giving Jason our sincerest thanks, but don't forget to have a laugh at his expense when you see the photos of his bald noggan.   It was going grey anyway, mate!   The lovely People at Just Cuts at Burleigh Heads gladly help out   you're just six weeks away from looking your best, Jason. :-) ______________________________ Dougie's team raises $1130 for mens health: Recently, 3 members of Doug Smith Spares Management team Don Kelly, (Pymble store manager), Jason Masters (gold Coast store manager) and Daniel Clark (sales and marketing manger) donated their faces to Mens health, and participated in Movember. Movember raises funds towards and awareness of two important men's health initiatives, namely Prostate cancer and depression. The funds raised are shared between the Prostate Cancer Foundation and Beyond blue. In support of our team, Doug Smith Spares matched all donations received by the team, or by the staff individually, and with our contribution the total donation came to $1130. On behalf of Doug Smith Spares, I would like to thank our dedicated Mo-growers and of course those people who contributed financially. We'd also like to thank the Movember Foundation for providing us with the opportunity to get involved in this important activity. Sincerely, Matthew Martin Managing Director.   Dougie's staff turn up the volume   All staff at Doug Smith Spares recently participated in Loud Shirt Day to raise money for deaf children. Deafness is the single most common birth condition in Australia, and every year thousands of Aussie kids are born without the ability to communicate which we all take for granted. Loud shirt day is an initiative of ‘deaf kids talking’ which acts on behalf of 5 separate charities around Australia. This year, through participation of our staff, donations in store and online, we collected a total of $645.15. This amount was matched by Doug Smith Spares, bringing the total amount raised to $1290.30, which was sent to two of these charities, namely the Hear and say Centre Qld, and the Shepherd Centre in NSW.  On behalf of Doug Smith Spares, I would like to thank all our staff who participated in this very worthwhile activity. We’d also like to thank all those people who contributed financially, and of course the Deaf Kids Talking initiative for providing us the opportunity to help out in this small way. Sincerely,   Matthew Martin Managing Director	Brand new Fagor  appliances! 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