Five chambers win top honours at 2017 World Chamber Competition

Recognising chambers for their forward-looking approaches to solve some of today’s global challenges, 18 finalists competed across four diverse categories. Each presented their ground-breaking initiatives to an international judging panel, and many of the 1,000 delegates attending the biennial Congress. Ultimately, five chambers walked away as World Chambers Competition champions.

The 2017 winners are:

The Brazilian Confederation of Trade and Business Associations for the Best Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) project that empowers women in business;

The Business West Chamber of Commerce for the Best Job Creation and Business Development project, which aims to maximise international trade as a means of benefitting business in South West England;

The Hamburg Chamber of Commerce for the Best Education and Training project and their work with refugee integration into the labour market; and

The Dubai Chamber of Commerce for boosting the innovation ecosystem throughout Dubai, and the Pereira Chamber of Commerce for stimulating economic development in their city and region through a targeted marketing campaign for the Best Unconventional projects.

This is the first time in the history of the Competition that the jury has voted for joint winners of a category—a truly “unconventional” surprise. The biennial Competition originally received 53 applications from chambers, representing 27 countries.

Organised by the ICC World Chambers Federation (WCF), the World Chambers Competition is the only awards programme of its kind.  WCF Honorary Chair and head of the Competition jury Rona Yircali said: “The need to ideate is now more vital than ever before. Through this international concours, WCF aims to boost chamber creativity and innovation, as well as contribute to the exchange of best practices to help chambers flourish in the face of such adverse and uncertain business and economic conditions.”

In addition to their awards and global acknowledgement throughout the chamber network, each of the winning chambers took home a cash prize of €3,000 to further support their unique initiatives.

Commenting on their success, President of the Pereira Chamber of Commerce Mauricio Vega Lemus said: I am very excited because this award is not just for me or my chamber. This award is for the thousands of donors who gave their money to make our dream a reality. This is for our city.

“We have big challenges ahead of us but our convention centre is a winner, an international winner. Now we have to be better, each and every day. It is a big responsibility. But with the prize money from the award, we are going to donate it so we can build a hospital in the same way that we built our convention centre. This is truly amazing.”