The eight awards for this year – six business-focused and two community awards – were launched at a lunchtime event attended by sponsors and prospective applicants.
The theme for 2005 is ‘creativity’ and will provide the backdrop for the annual gala dinner held in March.
This is the fourth year of the awards and the organisers are hoping to attract applications from as wide a range of organisations as possible by highlighting the benefits of ‘positive PR’ and image enhancement for those shortlisted.
For those working in the community this can also mean more effective fund-raising.
For example, Police Constable Andy Bisson, one of the team responsible for the Prison! Me! No way! campaign which won two awards last year, said: ‘It does make businesses sit up and take notice, because you start out with a positive statement.
In the last year we’ve become registered as a charity and we now have a board of management and a business plan.
Kristina Le Feuvre, who with husband Carlton won the Indigo Lighthouse Group entrepreneur of the year award for their aMaizin Maze, said the process of preparing the awards application had been extremely helpful.
‘I have a finance background and prepare a lot of the figures in a chart format, but we found the process of collating everything together enabled us to step back and look at where we were five years ago and where we’d got to.
That’s something you wouldn’t normally take the time to do and it was really exciting.
Kevin Keen, managing director of Jersey Dairy, the winners of the top Jersey Post Award for Enterprise, said: ‘We were so proud to have won.
Our business had been through a very tough time, some people had lost their jobs, and the reason we entered was to try and raise the morale for our people and give some encouragement for what we believed we had already achieved and get people ready for more change.
‘Our entry was not very fancy.
I put it together myself over a couple of days and it really wasn’t difficult.
I would encourage anybody to think about entering – it is a great experience even being shortlisted, but to win was one of the best moments of my life.
This year there have been changes to two of the awards.
The Jersey Tourism Champion will this year be voted for by members of the industry and nominations are invited from all sectors to find the business that has made a special contribution to tourism during 2005.
The Equity Trust Training in Business award brings together the previous Education Link award and the training awards previously organised independently by the Training and Employment Partnership.
It is open to companies, institutions, small businesses and training providers and will recognise the organisation that best shows outstanding commitment to staff development.
The other awards are: Jersey Post Award for Enterprise; Guiton Jersey Ambassador of the Year; Garenne Group Community Award; Jersey Telecom Small Business Award; Finance Award; Indigo Lighthouse Group Entrepreneur of the Year.
Full details and entry forms are available on the website www.
erseyawards.
om and the closing date for entries, which is earlier than in previous years, is Friday 18 November.
