New awards focus on small business growth

The launch event was sponsored by Engen and took place at Moyo's Zoo Lake in Johannesburg.

“Small business development is stepping into a new era after the finalisation of the Broad-based Black Economic Empowerment Codes earlier this year,” says Bignews for the Business Owner publisher Christoff Oosthuysen.

Previously assistance to small businesses was mainly the domain of government and development agencies, but with the inclusion of enterprise development as one of seven elements in the BEE codes, most companies are launching projects aimed at the growth of small businesses. “Nowhere else in the world is investment by the business sector promoted to such a degree,” says Oosthuysen.

Bignews for the Business Owner is presenting the Enterprise Development Awards along with the paper's controlling shareholder BDFM Publishers and with the endorsement of the Department of Trade and Industry. Bignews is the largest small business newspaper in South Africa covering 54% of the circulation of all small business, entrepreneurial and motivational publications.

Bignews editor, Sam Kalisa, says: “Bignews aims to give a voice to the community of owner-managers in South Africa. As such, we try to promote best practice in enterprise development that will ultimately benefit the community of small business owners. The idea is to identify and celebrate good enterprise development programmes from the government sector, business and civil society so that best practice will be promoted.”

Five categories

The Bignews Enterprise Development Awards covers five categories for programmes to enter, namely Best Independent ED Practitioner or Agency; Best Internal Corporate ED Programme; Best External Corporate ED Programme; Best Government ED Programme; and Best Not-For-Profit, Educational or Partnership ED Programme.

The panel of judges for the Awards consists of Sifiso Ndwandwe, past government and corporate ED manager and CEO of the MDA; Haroon Bhorat, member of presidential economic advisory panel and UCT professor; Judi Hudson, market researcher and manager of Finscope Small Business Survey; Tebogo Khaas, president of the SME Forum and CEO of Digital IQ Group; Trudi van Niekerk, past corporate ED manager at SAB and presently GM Franchising at ABSA; and Christoff Oosthuysen, ED consultant and publisher of Bignews.

Says Sifiso Ndwandwe, convener of the panel of judges says: “We are looking for interventions that perform well on a combination of criteria. For instance,. we are looking for focused interventions with clear goals and objectives that improve overall performance of beneficiaries in a deep or significant way – the quality of the intervention is more important than reaching a wide range of beneficiaries. Also we are looking for improvement in management capacity, strengthening of performance management systems, and building capacity to include skills and knowledge improvement of staff.”

Entries for the 2007 ED Awards close on 3 September and the winners will be announced in October. Go to www.bignews.co.za for details on how to enter.