NRMA Local Hero: Annette Brodie

For most Australians, securing a new phone often comes with an unintended spin-off. Amid the excitement of unboxing and setting up the new device, many stow the old one in the dusty corner of a drawer and simply forget about it.

This month’s NRMA Local Hero, Annette Brodie, came up with a simple solution to the problem about five years ago, helping thousands of disadvantaged Australians along the way.

“I saw an opportunity to meet that need in society where people would like to do something good with their old phone, and people who need a working phone because of whatever disadvantaged situation they find themselves in,” Annette explains.

In February 2020, on the eve of the COVID-19 pandemic, Annette launched The Reconnect Project in a bid to address what she terms the growing “digital divide”.

For the first four weeks, as the world slowly ground to a halt, the project operated out of shared premises with another charity in Sydney – initially using $5000 raised through crowdfunding. During that time, a social worker from a nearby council sent out a bulletin to multiple social support agencies, and suddenly Annette’s fledgling program was inundated with requests.

“We were six weeks into the COVID lockdown and I’d received 400 requests for devices, so what it did was fast-track the awareness of The Reconnect Project within the social service sector,” she says.

“Once the digital divide started becoming topical in mainstream media, it benefited us greatly. People were more aware of the problems that had been exacerbated by COVID.”

Clearly, the issue hasn’t gone away since the world reopened.

Annette and the shop staff.

How the Reconnect Project works

As it stands, The Reconnect Project estimates there are 23 million mobile phones sitting unused in drawers and garages across Australia, not to mention tablets and laptops that have broken or been set aside for a newer model.

The program wipes prospective devices of all their digital data, ensuring they are clean and untraceable. Relevant repairs are then made to individual devices, before they are deemed safe for women fleeing domestic violence, refugees relocating to Australia, at-risk youth, and people recovering from mental health episodes or exiting the justice system, among others.

Today, more than 3300 devices have been put into new hands using The Reconnect Project, creating a new link in the technology ecosystem. The program has grown to nine full-time staff.

“At the time, there was no social justice program focused on providing mobile phones to people in disadvantaged situations,” Annette says.

“The only alternatives were the national scheme to recycle phones, which puts them through a shredder, or the option to stick your old phone in a drawer and forget about it for a few years.”

Helping people to help themselves

Handily, the refurbishment process has benefited another part of the community, too: neurodivergent young adults.

The Reconnect Project now offers a six-month internship program for high school graduates who are interested in technology repair but are unsure where to go.

“We teach them how to repair phones, how to engage with customers and how to be in a work environment because generally these kids haven’t even had a job at Macca’s,” says Annette.

The Reconnect Project now lives in a dedicated shopfront in the southern Sydney suburb of Penshurst. On top of its social justice work, the shopfront offers repair services for mobile phones and will soon expand to an online store with refurbished technology – both of which help prop up the charitable work. Two doors down, The Reconnect Project runs its dedicated training centre.

In April 2024, The Reconnect Project was awarded the National Banksia Sustainability Award for Circular Economy.

Can you help the Reconnect Project?

But the work continues. Because of its reuse and repair positioning, The Reconnect Project doesn’t currently receive recurrent government funding.

“The program is still predominantly individuals donating to us. We’ve got one local council in Sydney, plus a couple of other non-profits, that send their ex-staff devices to us. But we need more,” Annette says.

“It’s a continual process: devices come in, they get refurbished and they go out.

“To continue the charitable side of things, we definitely need that incoming flow of devices, and particularly fleets of devices from businesses or schools where we’re getting batches of 50 or 100 devices. That makes our process much faster and ensures we have good quality stock coming through.

“We constantly require access to funding and for people to support us,” she adds. “Seeing the devices coming back to life is still the most rewarding part of all this. Because in that process, we’ve supported a young person with skills and employment opportunities, and we’re supporting someone in the community that desperately needs a working device.”