Mercure Sydney - The Schwartz Foundation

AHA NSW Awards for Excellence 2008
Mercure Sydney
Cash in-kind and logistical donation
• Community bistro
Dr. Schwartz has set up a full commercial kitchen under his medical centre in Matraville.
He has been able to do this with the help of Jenny Farrell who assists him greatly with
upgrading of his kitchens and bars.
With this facility, Dr. Schwartz has identified an operator who has not the resources to
set up his own kitchen, and by offering the premises rent free assists Ian to commence
his own business.
• Business sponsorship
Dr. Schwartz, with the assistance of Accor has paid an immigration lawyer to make
Schwartz Family Company an approved business sponsor, so that temporary visas can
be given to overseas people to obtain hospitality experience in Australia.
• NSW Ice Skating Juniors
The Macquarie Hotel donated a 40 inch LCD TV, valued at about $5,000 was donated to
the Ice Skating Association Raffle for the second year in a row.
The money raised by raffling this TV goes towards the young skaters who may be our
future Australian Olympic Champions.
• Multiple Sclerosis Pub Crawl
This was orgainised to go to six different pubs in the Sydney CBD, commencing from
the Mercure Sydney. This raised about $3,000 for MS by the subscription fees, money
raised on the day from participants or voyeurs, and by T-shirt sales. Dr. Schwartz
arranged the event, paid for the promotional activity, and for the T-shirts.
• TVs; Furniture( especially beds); Soft furnishings
As mentioned above, Schwartz Family Company hotels have over 2,000 rooms. They
are in a continual cycle of upgrading. In particularly the TVs are being converted to flat
screen TVs, so that over the last year almost 1200 “older style” CRT TVs have been
removed from the rooms. Some are given to staff, but the majority are given to different
charitable groups. They include local church groups, the larger organisations (including
Mathew Talbot and St. Vincent’s de Paul), and now about 200 TVs are going to an
orphanage in Bali.
Similarly over 300 beds have been distributed to various groups, including some
blankets and valences.
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