On Friday 9th March 2018, a couple of Challenge Wales volunteers were at the South Wales Business Growth Awards in Cardiff Bay. It was time to leave the scruffy deck shoes and jeans at home and put on smart shoes and posh clothes.
The South Wales Business Awards recognise the amazing achievements of businesses in South Wales (as the name obviously suggests!), many of them small, many of them innovative, many of them you probably wouldn’t recognise or have heard of but all of them making a difference to the Welsh economy.
Challenge Wales was excited to be shortlisted as a finalist in not one but two categories: People Development and Innovation. Having won the People Development category the previous year we knew it would be difficult with such fantastic businesses in the room to win it again but as always with Award events everyone was very optimistic about winning.
The evening also gave us an opportunity to network amongst some businesses we were already getting to know and were supportive of Challenge Wales. Relationship building is really important to Challenge Wales.
Amazingly, Challenge Wales picked up two Highly Commended Awards (yay) in both the People Development Category AND the Innovation Category. It means a lot to be recognised in the business world for our achievements and our impact, it is great recognition for our volunteers who work tirelessly to help the charity. Winning an award is a great talking point when we go to meetings, it’s a fantastic opportunity to share success amongst our stakeholders and our young people’s groups and funders.
As with most events, there is a ‘financial cost’ to us attending awards however, before we ever book our attendance at any awards event we balance up the benefits. The value and support that we get from being part of the South Wales business networking group which the awards are part of certainly outweighs the cost, and it is this networking group that has introduced us to so many other local businesses who have gone on to support Challenge Wales both directly with fundraising or in-kind with support to help us successfully achieve our charity objectives. These kind of relationships make everyone a winner!