Winner - Commitment to the Community Award

The Business Awards Derbyshire is the county’s premier showcase for enterprise, endeavour and commercial success. At the 2008 awards ceremony on Friday, hosted by Giles Brandreth, Pachacuti was announced as the winner of the Commitment to the Community Award.

The Award is designed to demonstrate that community engagement can actively enhance a company’s business model and reinforce success. This award category attracted many high calibre applicants and we fought off strong competition to carry off the award on the night.

Pachacuti’s involvement with its local community includes participation in the Fairtrade Town initiative, One World Group, Ashbourne Reward Scheme, offering placements to fashion students from Derby University and working with textiles students at QEGS to put on a fashion show this spring. I am also a Business Language Champion, part of a national scheme designed to pair schools, in this case QEGS, with local businesses in order to demonstrate the relevance of languages for the students future careers. As a member of the UK Female Amabassadors Programme, I also spend time providing advice for female entrepreneurs of the future, particularly those involved in ethical businesses.

As a fair trade business, we are also committed to supporting development projects in the South American communities who make their clothing, accessories and panama hats. Recent projects include the construction of a co-operative grocery shop and support for alcoholics and their wives. This year we will begin to fund an annual panama hat apprenticeship scheme which will enable 20 young weavers to undertake two year apprenticeships and will help to stem the migration of young people to urban areas.

I also made it through several rounds of judging to be one of three finalists in the Entrepreneur of the Year category. Although I was disappointed not to be the eventual winner, Gyles Brandreth called for a special round of applause for the two female entrepreneurs, myself and Rebecca Cadnam-Jones of KC Jones Events and said that we had both demonstrated remarkable business skills to make it through to the final.