GEEGEELUP Village and its residents received a $5000 grant from Synergy recently after Village administrator Steve Webb spent about 10 minutes filling in a form he found on the Synergy web site.
Synergy's general manager of Energy Markets Geoff Roberts said Synergy was always looking for ways in which to give back to the community.
"We have implemented our Grants, Rewards, Information, Deals program, and the key part of it is a quarterly grant of $5000 and we are really pleased to be able to give it to the Geegeelup Village today as the inaugural winner of the first community grant," he said.
"I'm sure it will be used for a great cause by paying for three new airconditioning units which will help to give even more comfort for the residents."
Mr Webb, as he received the cheque, said three of the rooms were airconditioned last year and it was budgeted for a further three rooms to be fitted out this year.
"However, with this generous grant we will be able to aircondition a further three rooms this year, making a total of nine out of 16 of the rooms," he said.
"With our budgeting we have two more years to go to complete all rooms unless we can get another grant next year.
"I didn't think we had any chance at all to get this grant, but when I looked at the details of the application I thought, we can do this, and we won.
"This grant will assist us in helping to maintain the temperature comfort levels for our residents."
Mr Webb thanked Mr Roberts for the very welcome grant.
Geegeelup Village Inc. is a not-for-profit organisation formed in 1983 to provide aged care facilities for the local Bridgetown community.
Since 1983, the organisation has grown to a village comprising a 16 bed Low Care - Ageing in Place residential care hostel with six rental units for aged residents and 28 independent living units for the aged.
Geegeelup Village is the smallest residential care hostel in WA and as a relatively old establishment the village needs to constantly upgrade its facilities.
To date, the village's elderly and frail residents have managed to survive without airconditioning in individual rooms, but with the increasing level of high care residents, and to provide comfort there is a need to upgrade the cooling and heating facilities.
With a tight capital expenditure budget, the village has implemented a program to install reverse-cycle airconditioners to each room on a progressive basis, but are limited to three units per year unless funded by donations or grants. Synergy's GRID program was launched in May this year to eligible business customers and a component of the program is the Synergy grant scheme, offering both community and energy management grants.
The grant scheme is a practical incentive to offer Synergy's business customers the opportunity to support their local community, and apply energy efficient practices within their business.
This is the first time Synergy has offered the community grant. Eligible businesses were invited to apply for the $5000 grant which would see the grant monies go towards a worthy cause the business sought to support.
