Program aims to help businesses thrive

PRIOR to the coronavirus pandemic, supporting local businesses was a big focus for regional towns, and now it seems more important than ever.

With that in mind GROW Bendigo, an initiative from Be.Bendigo, is seeking to remind businesses, authorities and residents to support local, with stickers on the front windows of shops through to business grants from all levels of government.

Project manager Petra McLoughlin said the program helps connect businesses to each other, as well as the community.

“Businesses work better together locally,” she said. “Local businesses give opportunities to other local businesses and where those businesses prosper, they provide opportunities to people with a disadvantage or barrier to work.”

As part of the initiative, the GROW Bendigo provides a network for both businesses and government organisations to ensure that, where possible, local companies are heavily considered.

“Government organisations who get government money have a mandate to provide opportunities to locals, so really my position is to help ameliorate that and connect them to other businesses,” Ms McLoughlin said.

So far, GROW Bendigo has 38 businesses and government agencies in their network and is always looking to expand.

A similar initiative was launched during the COVID-19 pandemic called Localised Central Victoria, an online database for businesses to better advertise themselves.

“What we were hearing from government agencies was ‘we want to do more business locally and with some smaller businesses’ but they don’t know who’s around,” Ms McLoughlin said.

“People are pretty focused about giving opportunities to local business, but you don’t know what you don’t know.

“If you don’t know that there are businesses in Bendigo that can do X, Y, Z you might be going to Melbourne or Sydney for that when you could indeed be helping your local economy,”

Ms McLoughlin said GROW Bendigo will also be working with businesses on their recruitment processes to ensure that local residents have the best chance at employment.

“At the end of the day we want to project local jobs as much as we can,” she said.

“Local jobs means local families and that’s the parents of the kids your kids go to school with, the person you bump into at the supermarket and we want to ensure that Bendigo stays as thriving as it is and protect our jobs,” Ms McLoughlin said.

“The focus for us is to work with businesses to look at the recruitment process and see where they can make an opportunity to people who are experiencing a barrier.”