Tickets on sale for 10th annual Women of Excellence Awards Gala

Tickets are on sale for next week’s 10th annual Women of Excellence Awards Gala in Red Deer. 

Twenty-three exceptional women from around central Alberta have been nominated for this year’s 10th annual Women of Excellence Awards.

Janice Wing, Community Relations Director at Red Deer College helped establish the awards a decade ago. This year, she is nominated for an award in the ‘Business and the Professions’ category.

Wing says the awards gala is an event like no other in Red Deer.

“It’s a unique event because we bring women together from 11 distinct categories who are recognized at the same event with the same criteria. Everybody brings their list of achievements, the work they’ve done, and then they’re judged on their achievement in their discipline, their contribution to the community as a whole and then the work they’ve done as being a role model for other women and for girls,” she says.

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“We hear this line a lot, ‘Oh it’s an honour to be nominated,’ but with all sincerity, it is an amazing honour to be nominated because if you look back on the website at the faces of all of the women over the last 10 years that have received this award, it’s the most humbling thing to ever have happen in your life.”

One of this year’s ‘Young Woman of Excellence’ nominees is Grace Bigazi, an immigrant who immediately made a positive impact in her new community upon arriving in Canada.

“At that time, refugee issues were at the forefront of Canadian policy-making. I sort of had an insight on how the school could deal with newcomers coming to Canada and what it’s like being a newcomer in the education system,” she explains. “In my first year at Lindsay Thurber, I gave talks to staff members about what it’s like being a newcomer and what they could do to help new students coming through.”

Bigazi, now a poli-sci major at King’s University in Edmonton, comes back to Thurber to give similar talks. She’s also involved with a committee at KU to help other refugees clear the barriers that exist for refugees as far as accessing post-secondary education.

“I’m passionate about speaking for people who otherwise wouldn’t have this kind of platform I have right now. I came to Canada with the advantage that I spoke English, and there are others who come with no English at all,” she says.

“It’s a privilege that I speak English, so I hope I can use it to speak to what’s happening in their lives and fix the world. I was born in Congo, we moved around, I lived in Rwanda, Tanzania, and Kenya was my last stop before I moved to Canada.”

The Women of Excellence Awards Gala is happening June 7 at the Sheraton. Tickets are available at rddcf.ca.