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The RIRDC Rural Women's Award
Rural Women's Award 2011 National Winner and Runner-up
The 2011 Australian RIRDC Rural Women’s Award
Read the inspirational stories of the 2011 Australian RIRDC Rural Woman of the Year, Caroline Robinson, the Runner-up, Barbara Grey, and the other State and Territory winners and runners-up. Click here to see publications on rural women.
Click
to download brief bios of the 2011 State Winners and State Runners-up.
Click here to download a high resolution image of Caroline Robinson. Video UpdatesClick here to see Rural Women's Award landline story Click here to see Caroline's video profile on You Tube. Click here to see Caroline's acceptance speech and interview on Award night. | Rural entrepreneur Caroline Robinson lives in Woolocutty, Western Australia. She is a rural development consultant specialising in community development, strategic engagement and project management, and a wheat and sheep producer from Woolocutty in the Western Australian wheat belt. Caroline is the brains behind the Wheatbelt Business Network (WBN) established to promote local produce and regional tourism, and to provide opportunities for entrepreneurship and networking, training and education and the advancement of women in business. The WBN is fast becoming the glue that is binding many of the communities of the wheat belt together during an extremely difficult drought period. Since its formal launch in March 2010 the Network has become a central point on the eastern wheatbelt for news and information, and a hub for businesses to promote their services and products. The Network is now well supported by five local shires, and in some of those shires has the support of half their businesses. Caroline’s Award ambition is to further develop the Network as a conduit to investment into the region, as a vehicle to help businesses support each other and to encourage business to engage in electronic and social media and marketing. She plans to research and develop a Buy Local marketing campaign for the wheat belt that will emphasise local consumer loyalty and the value of business-to-business sales. She will use the Bursary to visit other rural communities and learn from their strategies. She will then coordinate a survey of local government and key stakeholders across the wheat belt to identify the gaps within the local economy and the scope for existing businesses and prospective new businesses to fill those gaps. She then intends to embark on a comprehensive marketing campaign for the entire region. Caroline believes that encouraging people to buy local will not only help the viability of current businesses but provide an opportunity for new business ventures and alternate income streams for rural people. She thinks the Buy Local marketing campaign has the potential to be adopted by other communities across the country.
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RWA 2010 National Runner-Up: Barbara Grey and QueenslandWinner Click here to download a high resolution image of Barbara Grey. Click here to see Barbara's video profile on You Tube. Click here to see Barbara's acceptance speech and interview on You Tube. | Rural communicator Barbara Grey lives in Mungindi, Queensland and has been an irrigated cotton grower for the past 30 years. The innovative and efficient practices she and her husband have put in place on their farm has led to them being awarded the prestigious Cotton Australia ‘Innovative Grower of the Year Award’ in 2007, and consistently being placed in the top five percentile of their region’s benchmarking group for cotton growing. Barbara is Chair of the Women’s Industry Network – Cotton and Non-executive Director of the Cotton Co-operative Research Centre. She is a graduate of the Australian Rural Leadership Foundation, has just completed an Advanced Diploma in Business and is currently enrolled in a Masters of Business Administration. Barbara is committed to strong, healthy and productive rural industries and regional communities and is deeply concerned about what she believes is a growing disconnect between rural people and government and decision makers. Her Award ambition is to implement a pilot education program that will empower aspiring rural and regional women leaders to gain a better understanding of the political process and government decision making which will help give them a stronger and more effective voice for rural industries and regional communities. Barbara will use the Bursary to build her skills in project facilitation to give her the competencies to deliver on this pilot program. In the longer term, she believes the pilot could be replicated and become a regular training initiative for rural and regional women. |