The Gold Industry Group (GIG) was delighted to elect Gold Fields Vice President of Legal and Compliance Kelly Carter to the position of Vice Chair along with the re-election of current Board members at its Annual General Meeting last week. 

With a focus on promoting diversity, Kelly's appointment follows the GIG's successful Women in Gold networking event where she captivated some 300 industry colleagues, telling her story and addressing current gender diversity challenges and opportunities for the mining sector.

Chairman Richard Hayes opened the GIG's second Annual General Meeting with a summary of the Group's first year of activities and welcomed new members Deloitte and Impact Minerals. 

"In its first year, the GIG has made significant progress in establishing its profile, building relationships, becoming a social media influencer, engaging with the community, and embarking on a number of initiatives to promote gold in education, tourism, innovation and investment," Richard said.

Richard provided an overview of the GIG's industry events, which hosted more than 600 people, as well as a number of member and affiliate events that were supported and promoted. He also spoke of the GIG's comprehensive content program, focused on educating and informing the wider Australian community about the industry.

"We have an established social community of more than 16,000 followers on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn and according to an industry measurement tool Klout, we are rocking the social media world.

"Our content has been viewed more than one million times via our online channels alone this year, which included 55 articles published on our website," said Richard.

GIG Executive Officer Rebecca Johnston concluded the proceedings with the announcement of some new initiatives for 2017 and the progress of the GIG's community engagement project announced earlier this year.

"We have now created the Heart of Gold app and developed the Heart of Gold Discovery Trail, and we look forward to showing you the test version on iPads today. 

"This is a great opportunity to educate and engage future generations about the history and importance of gold and I hope you will join us," Rebecca said.

The Perth Mint, Gold Fields Australia and Ramelius Resources have confirmed their sponsorship of the project and the majority of members have expressed interest in becoming actively involved. The launch is planned for quarter four next year.

A number of new initiatives were announced to educate the community, connect the industry and promote gold across Australia.

"I am pleased to announce we are embarking on a research project with Deloitte to measure the direct and multiplier impacts of the gold industry on Australia’s economy.

"This will include how the gold industry contributes to the social fabric of our communities and it will demonstrate the gold industry’s importance to Australia," Rebecca said.

The project will be led by Deloitte Access Economics Partner Matt Judkins with key messages to be used throughout the GIG's communications and educational initiatives. 

With a strong focus on education, the GIG also announced a partnership with affiliate WA Mining Club on their Scholarship Program. 

In addition, the GIG is in the process of developing a national gold jewellery design competition to promote gold jewellery and engage and educate the wider community about gold.

"We are still in the early planning stages but we already have the support of Pallion as a major sponsor," Rebecca said.

Next year the GIG will support two worthy not-for-profit organisations through community and member engagement and promotion, as well as funds generated from events which will be announced soon.

Opportunities to engage more in regional areas and other states will also be explored in 2017.