To put this together, it takes an army of people. What started as an idea that came from traveling around the world and seeing how various incubators are being run, is now in pre-launch stage. To get to this point, I would like to thank:

• Mark Crawley, CEO, Charters Towers Regional Council, for being the best local government CEO in Australia. This man is innovative, forward thinking and incredibly active in making a difference to the entire Charters Towers region. He works long hours, responds on weekends and likes everything we do on social media. Without him and his support that extends to some fantastic people who work at the Council, this would not be happening. There would not be an incubator program to get off the ground.
  
  
• Rob Crombe from Kookai Australia for his time and sharing of knowledge on how incubators that he has personally been involved with and funded, work in Fiji. This sharing of experiences has allowed for me to shape how The World Incubator should run to achieve the goal of creating jobs and giving hope to a community that is not built on an entrepreneurial spirit.
  
  
• Luke Zagami, a graphic design intern, for designing The World Incubator brand, tweaked by Paula Sagiadellis, Marketing Eye's Creative Director. Keep a watch on Luke as I am sure we are going to see this talented individual design many more brands in the years to come.
  
  
• Jo Ryan-lamb, a graphic design intern, for designing The World Incubator website, also tweaked by Paula Sagiadellis, Marketing Eye's Creative Director. She worked tirelessly on this project to take the brand into the digital work, and present it in a way that resonates with community, incubator participants and potential sponsors. This is a difficult blend to work out and she did this very well.
  
  
• Elsie Fulton, a marketing intern who turned this project into a passion project for herself as well. She developed proposals from scratch, worked with Jo Ryan-Lamb on the presentation, wrote parts of the website and in general took this project on with the utmost professionalism resulting in a huge success all-round.
  
  
• Victoria Dawson, a PR intern, who wrote a number of communications for the project. She is super talented and shared that talent in her work.
  
  
• Paula Sagiadellis, Marketing Eye's creative director, who has been working on every aspect of design, creating a brand that I am incredibly proud of. She has stayed back late on many occasions to complete designs for presentations and always given everything that has been given to her 110%. I am incredibly lucky to have her on our team.
  
  
• Danielle Low, a graphic designer at Marketing Eye who has worked on various projects. She is super cool and has brought a bit of "cool" to the project and some great ideas.
  
  
• Juliette Sperber, General Manager of logistics and stevedoring company, NSS, who was the first person I called to ask for sponsorship of the project. She said yes immediately. Her support for the community is phenomenal, a precedent that NSS has always had in their focus on not just being a business that employs over 100 people, but also a company that cares about the community. We would like to thank other sponsors as well, but given that Juliette was first, I would like to give her a special mention.
  
  
• Bill McGrath, from Fresh Promotions, who immediately put up his hand to provide free high quality promotional products with The World Incubator branding. Bill is incredibly kind and I ask for anyone looking for promotional products to speak to him first and I am sure he will give you a very competitive price.
  
  
• The entire Marketing Eye team that have participated in putting this together and making it to the stage we have. They have worked long hours without any gripes and have brought to the table ideas and ways of doing things that only a collaborative team like them is able to do.
  
  

The World Incubator will change lives of people who live in Charters Towers. When the first incubator businesses graduate, they will give the region 'promise' that the best is yet to come. The next stage is marketing commercialised concepts and getting to a stage of employing people. Some people will actually be ready to seek investment and at that stage there are some very powerful business people waiting to give away cash to the right business ideas.

Please support this initiative in some way and help the people in the incubator be success stories that we are all proud of.