By 
Creative Hawke’s Bay, an independent charitable trust which supports both professional and semi-professional artists in the region, has been awarded a Regional Council contract to provide services aimed at promoting productivity and innovation through design to the local business community.
The contract runs for 11 months and is worth between $125,000 and $150,000.
Hawke's Bay Regional Council's vision when it invited bids for the contract included provision of services that would:
- Promote the development of design culture in the Hawke’s Bay region by demonstrating the benefits for business of adopting or reviewing their design processes.
- Highlight the manner in which design influences innovation and productivity.
- Encourage selected Hawke’s Bay businesses to integrate design processes in a way that improves business performance and global competitiveness.
- In a practical way, demonstrate the benefits of adopting and integrating design as part of a company’s strategic process (e.g., case studies).
13:09, 09.09.2009
Hi guys
Pukehou School here. you may have heard about us through our environmental education initiatives and awards that we have won because of this. Earlier this year we were lucky enough to get installed on our school roof solar power panels from Genesis Energy. This has proved to be a real learning journey for our students and they now want to be able to monitor how much power we use and how we can save power and how many more solar panels we need to become self sufficient with our power. There is a system that can do this called eco driver but it is expensive ( $4000) and the ongoing monitoring costs are prohibitive for a small country school at $150 per month! we wonder if there is any way you guys can help us. It would be fantastic to become the first power self sufficient school in NZ and this is a real possibility according to Genesis Energy given our size and the angle of our roof! Sooo… have athink and see what you can offer us!
Regards
Jenny Prebble
Principal
19:07, 09.09.2009
Hi Jenny,
That sounds really cool.
How about this:
We’ll donate you three Xero subscriptions. $49 a month each. If you can get 3 of your parents to sign up their businesses to Xero we’ll donate $150 back to you each month to cover your monthly monitoring costs.
Let me know.
Rod @ Xero (the worlds most environmentally friendly accounting system)
11:49, 21.09.2009
Hey Jenny
Just thought I would put a plug in for Xero. My company switched to Xero at the start of the financial year. My Mum works for me one day a week doing the admin and she reckons Xero has near on made her redundant! Xero is very easy to use. Reconciling bank statements is a thing of the past. The upside is Mum now has more time to get take the recycling to the recycle station.
Hopefully you can tap into some grants for the $4000.
Good Luck and go Rod for your generousity.