2022 Innovate with nbn® Grants Program: the winners
At nbn, we’re always looking ahead – investing in innovation today so Australians are ready for tomorrow.
In line with this commitment, I’m delighted to share with you the winners of the 2022 Innovate with nbn Grants Program.
About the program
Now in its third year, the Innovate with nbn Grants Program attracted a record number of entrants from across Australia.
Designed to help regional businesses transform their ideas into game changing products and services, it was exciting to see the extremely high calibre of entrants that did just that.
Run in partnership with the Regional Australia Institute (RAI), the Innovate with nbn Grants Program is part of nbn’s commitment to lift the digital capability of Australia.
For the first time following the COVID-19 pandemic, this year’s winners gathered in person at a gala event in Canberra (Ngunnawal Country) to accept their awards.
Grants of $15,000 were allocated to innovative businesses enabled by the nbn network across seven categories: Agriculture, Arts, Education, Health, Indigenous Business, Tourism, and Women in Regional Business.
An overall Innovate with nbn Champion was also awarded an additional $20,000 grant to help them take their broadband-enabled idea to the next level.
The winners
Agriculture and overall Innovate with nbn Champion
TerraLab
Victorian based geospatial and environmental consulting business, TerraLab, is the brains behind STA logger, an automated weed mapping attachment that can be fixed to equipment used to apply herbicide.
TerraLab owner and principal consultant Harley Schinagl hopes to adapt the existing solution to enable it to map tree planting locations, providing users with sophisticated land management data recording, analysis and decision-making abilities.
How the Innovate with nbn Grant will be used
Arts
Radio Margaret River Inc
Australia’s first community-oriented internet radio station, Western Australia (WA) based Radio Margaret River (Noongar Country) was launched in 2020 by a group of like-minded and passionate individuals who saw the digital platform’s potential to connect with their community.
Streaming content through its own app to ensure the approximate 10,000 listeners a month have easy access to programming, the not-for-profit broadcaster’s guiding vision is ‘Local Pulse, Global Beat’ supported by its purpose to ‘connect, inform, enrich, enliven and entertain’ the local community.
How the Innovate with nbn Grant will be used
Education
iClick2Learn
A social enterprise, iClick2Learn prides itself on helping not-for-profit organisations, volunteers and community groups to overcome access and affordability hurdles preventing them from reaping the benefits of sector specific training.
Located in New South Wales, iClick2Learn is committed to ‘helping the helpers’ by ensuring the people that serve our communities can upskill through areas such as online workshops, fundraising and mentoring.
How the Innovate with nbn Grant will be used
Health
Connect Paediatric Therapy Services
Connect Paediatric Therapy Services (Connect PTS) provides allied and mental health support ranging from speech pathology and physiotherapy to specialist literacy programs for children and young people living in rural and remote northwest WA.
Originally established in the Pilbara town of Karratha (Ngarluma and Yindjibarndi Country), as its footprint has grown, Connect PTS has increasingly turned to digital solutions – such as telehealth – to support clients separated by thousands of kilometres in locations including Carnarvon, Port Hedland and Christmas Island.
How the Innovate with nbn Grant will be used
Indigenous Business
The Cultural Intelligence Project
Based in Broome, WA, The Cultural Intelligence Project (TCIP) is an Indigenous business behind Make It Happen HQ, a female driven innovation hub and think tank designed to help First Nations entrepreneurs in the remote Kimberly region on the road to success.
TCIP founders Adele and Cara Peek say Make It Happen HQ aims to open doors for First Nations entrepreneurs such as themselves to enable them to take their work, ideas and business to the next level.
How the Innovate with nbn Grant will be used
Tourism
Busselton Jetty
At 1.841 kilometres long, the 157-year-old heritage listed Busselton Jetty in Western Australia’s Busselton (Wadandi Country), 230km south of Perth, is the longest timber piled jetty in the southern hemisphere.
Boasting an artificial reef, jetty visitors can view more than 300 unique marine species from eight metres below the surface without getting wet, in the world’s largest natural underwater observatory.
Operated by a not-for-profit community organisation, all proceeds from ticket sales go towards the jetty’s maintenance and conservation.
How the Innovate with nbn Grant will be used
Women in Regional Business
Vennu
Describing itself as an easy-to-use digital marketplace, Vennu connects community spaces, such as surf life-saving clubs and church halls, with those who want to hire them.
Based in New South Wales, founder and CEO Suzanne Campbell takes pride in Vennu’s ability to unlock idle and spare capacity for hire, addressing unmet demand in regional Australia by enabling anyone to find and book local and affordable spaces simply and in one place.
How the Innovate with nbn Grant will be used
Thank you and congratulations
Congratulations once again to all our winners and a sincere thanks to everyone who took the time to participate in the 2022 Innovate with nbn Grants Program.
I would particularly like to call out the dedication of our judging panel, who faced the challenging task of choosing each of the category winners from an extraordinarily strong field of applicants.
It is yet again another example of the extraordinary level of innovation and talent that’s alive and well in regional, rural and remote Australia.