Awards celebrate rural business women

Rural Women New Zealand are looking for entrepreneurial rural women to enter their 2022 Business Awards.

Regional Leader, Mary McTavish, says, “The NZI Rural Women NZ Business Awards provide an outstanding opportunity to showcase small rurally based enterprises owned and operated by women.”

“Our region has not had a category winner for over five years so we would like to encourage local rural women to enter the competition.”

Rotorua based Amy Cram (Dibley) of Physio Direct won the Innovation category and the Supreme Winner award in 2016. The enterprise started as a ‘physio for farmers’, a mobile health service for Rotorua’s rural residents, and was so successful it became a nationwide franchise.

Cram says,” The RWNZ Awards attracted extensive media coverage and provided amazing promotional opportunities for the business.”

Diane Coleman won the Love of the Land category in 2013 with Kaharoa company Treeline Native Nursery. She also went on to be awarded the Supreme Winner prize. Treeline provides native plants grown from locally sourced seeds to farmers, lifestyle block owners and councils for revegetation projects.

Coleman says the NZI RWNZ Business Awards were a great place “to celebrate the multiple hats we all wear as rural women”.

All NZI Rural Women NZ Business wards winners receive a trophy, $1,000 prize money, travel costs to the award ceremony in Wellington in November, and free membership to RWNZ-Ngā Wāhine Taiwhenua o Aotearoa. The Supreme Winner of NZI Rural Women NZ Business Awards receives a further $1,000 prize money.

The RWNZ Business Awards were first instigated in 2008. RWNZ president at the time, Margaret Chapman, says rural women were “not very good at blowing their own trumpets” but just got on with the job. She says RWNZ established the awards to celebrate the creativity and innovation of rural women entrepreneurs.

The awards are composed of seven categories: Emerging Business; Love of the Land; Rural Champion; Innovation; Bountiful Table; and Rural Health and Wellness Excellence

Entries close on Friday the 29th of July. For more information and the entry form visit ruralwomennz.nz/nzi-ruralwomen-nz-business-awards-2022