Regional Economic Development (RED) Grants – Round Two now Open
The RED Grants program is a State Government initiative that invests in community driven projects to create jobs and boost economic growth across regional Western Australia. The State Government's Royalties for Regions program will invest $28.8 million towards the RED Grants program over five years for projects that will directly benefit regional communities. 

Each of the Regional Development Commissions (RDC) manage the grant round process for their region, and will provide advice to applicants during the application process. Eligible applicants can apply for RED Grant funding of up to $250,000 for individual projects that promote sustainable jobs, partnerships, productivity, skills and capability, as well as stimulate new investment in industry diversification.

Round one investment totalled $6.38 million in 70 projects for initiatives across the nine regions.

The objectives of the RED Grants Program include:

• Sustainable jobs growth;
• Increasing productivity;
• Expanding or diversifying industry;
• Developing skills or capabilities; and
• Attracting new investment in the region;

We think that this grant program represents an excellent opportunity for many of our members – particularly with a focus on developing skills and capabilities. We are currently working with a few of our members in regard to what types of programs they could deliver and how they would go about making a submission. Please get in touch with me at ceo@regionalchamberswa.com.au if we can help your Chamber with this. To find out more about the Grants read here.

East Kimberly CCI – Virgin Corporate Flight Survey

EKCCI is in talks with Virgin Australia to discuss the possibility of EKCCI members having access to corporate rates on Virgin flights Perth to Kununurra and return. EKCCI need to build a feasible business case to put forward to Virgin to continue these discussions and have developed a survey to gain the appetite of their business and broader community – and also for people located in other parts of WA.

This is another great example of the advocacy of our members do to support and develop their business and broader community – great work EKCCI. We encourage you to complete and/or share the survey, where relevant with your networks.

Silly Socks 4  Sick Kids – Supporting Ronald McDonald House
Over the weekend of Friday 2nd – Sunday 4th August, we encourage you to wear a pair of Silly Socks for a gold coin donation to support Ronald McDonald House Charities WA. Funds raised will help them to provide a ‘home away from home’ for regional WA families with a seriously ill child receiving vital medical treatment in Perth.

Step 1: Register your Chamber, sporting club, organisation or workplace to receive your Silly Socks Fundraising Pack

Step 2: Let everyone know about the day and why they should get involved

Step 3: Pull up your Silly Socks, make your gold coin donation and have some fun!

To find our more read here. 

Town Teams WA Conference – September 13 and 14 2019
The Town Team Movement is an ‘under-arching’, non-profit organisation helping to create a network of town teams around Australia and New Zealand. They promote civic leadership, active citizenship and community empowerment. Town teams are positive and proactive organisations that include businesses, landowners and residents working collaboratively with their local government to improve a place or area, often a town centre or ‘main street’. We heard from Town Teams at our June Members Forum and many of our members expressed interested in attending their conference in September – the program sounds amazing. For more info go here.

Website Refresh - Send us your Documents
We are pleased to announce that we have built a member’s only access area on our website that will be a resource library to share information from our members with our members.  Now we need to fill it! We get asked every week for examples and templates and thought it would be great to have a live resource you could access. We hope this will be up and ready to go in the next few weeks and to assist us, could you please send Emmi at admin@regionalchamberswa.com.au any documents that you are happy to share with your fellow members. We will assume if you send it to us that you are happy for us to upload this on the members only access section of our website. Please send in pdf format (and in the smallest size you can), documents such as:

• Your Constitution
• Your Strategic or Operational Plans
• Membership Forms, Membership prospectus
• Member Benefits flyer
• BAH information
• Sponsorship information
• Directory information
• Business Awards Information
• Job and Position Descriptions
• Events information
• Policies and Procedures
• Committee Induction pack  etc

Update your Information
To assist Emmi with keeping our website and communications as up to date as possible can you please send to admin@regionalchamberswa.com.au the following:

• Any changes to your contact details, particularly following your AGM. Please also let Emmi know if you have any committee members or general members that you would like added to the newsletter and we will pop them on the distribution list.
• Your new logo if you have refreshed or changed it recently.
• Any activities, initiatives or events you would like us to include in our weekly newsletter. You will notice that we are including an item each week that showcases a great idea, program or event that one of our members is delivering. If you have something you would like us to share – please send through the details.
• Any events you would like added to soon to be coming events calendar on our website. If you have a specific logo for that event - could you also send that through, and we will include it.