Gabriella Vukman
In an effort to both support local businesses and disseminate Christmas cheer, Healesville Rotary Club are once again running their annual shop window competition.
Taking place from December 1 to 14, shops along Healesville mainstreet from the east to the west end are encouraged to put their elves to work and add some Christmas cheer to their windows.
Rotary vocational service committee member Sally Piper said, “Shops don’t have to be a recognised participant to take part. Any business who has made an effort to decorate their window automatically becomes part of the competition.”
A member of the Healesville Rotary Club photographs each shop window. Winners are decided via public votes as well as through the choice of Rotary Club members.
There are five prizes available to be won, all of which entail various amounts of expenditure at winning businesses.
Sally said, “We go around to each winning business and buy vouchers worth the amount of money that accompanies each of the five prizes.”
“We use those vouchers as raffle prizes throughout the next year to fund a range of rotary initiatives,” Sally said.
Public voting can be conducted online via the Healesville Rotary Club website.
Sally said, “we find the time to go around to businesses each year. We want the new businesses that come into town to feel welcome and be a part of our business community.”
Certificates are also awarded to businesses that receive the most votes.
“The responses we get make it all worthwhile,” Sally said.
“When you have the little kids coming in or when the parents are stacked up outside the windows, that’s just that little bit of encouragement to say ‘hey the effort that businesses make doesn’t go unrecognised.”
Encouraging people to wander along the streets of Healesville and generating an intriguing climate for Valley-going tourists, Sally said Healesville Rotary’s Christmas Window Competition aims to “support local businesses.”
Seeing as rotary is a community organisation composed of volunteers, Sally invites “anyone with an interest in community service” to come along to rotary meetings.
For more information visit the rotary website at: https://www.rotaryhealesville.org/
