Tips for writing your Tidy Towns Submission
Please feel free to complete the submission as you see fit. Below are some suggestions that may help -
- Make a date! Get your committee or group together to brainstorm the projects you want to enter in each category. Make it fun! Use this time as an opportunity to celebrate the work you have done over the past 12 months.
- Collect and Collate! Get all the information you have related to each category and each individual project and put them in a folder to help jog your memory while you are writing the submission.
- Summarise. Summarise the achievements of the projects by dots points.
- Begin writing. Start each of the categories by listing each project in a new section for that category. Refer to your notes to fill out each of the fields. If there are any supporting photos, newspaper clippings, etc. that you have saved to a thumb drive, refer to them in each section so the judges can look at them before they get to your community to judge.
- Include supporting photos and materials on the thumb drive. To help judges, please name them according to the category entered.
- Look for ways to describe and demonstrate your outcomes.
- While you are writing the submissions, keep in mind what the judges are looking for:
o The number of volunteers and volunteer hours (in proportion to population size).
o Projects/activities that have been worked on in the last 12 months–they can be a new projects, or improvements or maintenance of existing projects (they are equally weighted).Evidence of project planning.
o If applicable, evidence that the broader community has been engaged and involved in the project/program or activity including youth, schools, local government, business and local industry.
o Promotion of your Tidy Towns Sustainable Communities initiatives, goals and achievements to encourage community participation in the projects or activities.
o Evidence of the effort that has gone into the projects/activity.
- Save your documents to a thumb drive if possible. Make sure your photos are high resolution (2MB at least) so that we can use them in our publications.
- As usual, hand-written submissions are also welcome.
- Prize money is awarded to state category finalists and overall winners, so make sure you fill out the bank account details for any payment.
- Estimating volunteer participation and hours is important for us as a performance indicator of the success of the program and for annual reporting purposes. Please fill this section of the submission form out. You can do this by adding up the number of volunteers that have worked on each individual project (a). Multiplying by the number of hours they worked on that project each week (b) and multiply it by the number of weeks that project has been running (c). Here is an example that may be useful;
- Once you have sent your submission, make sure your committee rewards itself and other contributors for their achievements and hard work. Then attend the State Award and perhaps collect an award!