Our chapter recently launched the “Ricardo A. Bayona - COMCEL Award” to recognize the top entrepreneurs of EO Colombia. We named the award in memory of deceased chapter member Ricardo Bayona and for COMCEL, a major mobile phone company in Colombia that serves as our official sponsor.

The award goes to three winners for “Best Entrepreneurial Spirit,” and the top winner in that category is named “Entrepreneur of the Year.” These three awards are determined by how much a member has contributed to social initiatives and the community and how much new business success he or she has achieved during that fiscal year.

To keep the awards non-biased, our chapter brought in an outside jury comprised of three successful entrepreneurs/businesspeople who were non-EO members. All of the nominations were evaluated in May, and we held the awards ceremony on 13 June, at the end of our annual golf tournament.

I'm happy to report that Julián Montejo, Luis Enrique Piedrahita and Nicolas Diez are this year's winners for Best Entrepreneurial Spirit, and that Luis Enrique Piedrahita is our Entrepreneur of the Year! Congratulations!

Julián and Nicholas both received a US$1,000 prize, to be used toward an upcoming EO Global University in FY2008/2009, and Luis received US$2,000 toward a University.

Our chapter has always wanted an awards program like this, so we are proud that this year's chapter board members helped us realize our goal. We hope to inspire other EO chapters to begin their own internal awards program. For us, this awards program has helped us get better acquainted with our chapter members through the nomination process, and it has also provided us with a great opportunity to recognize our members for their accomplishments.

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If you have similar awards programs in your chapter, write us and tell us all about it!