The Geoffrey Roberts Award is an international travel award worth £3,000 (about $4,500) given each year to someone who can demonstrate to the judges that their travels are likely to make a positive difference to the worlds of food, drink and/or travel.

The Award has been made every year since 1996 to commemorate the life and work of the late Geoffrey Roberts (pictured below), pioneer importer of top quality New World wines into the UK.

Since its inception the Geoffrey Roberts Award has brought farmers’ markets to Australia; facilitated Professor Roger Corder’s highly publicised medical self-help book The Wine Diet; made a real difference to the lives of tsunami victims in Sri Lanka; yielded a brand new Somerset cheese, Ogleshield; helped African rural communities to help themselves; and exposed a young Georgian wine producer to modern winemaking techniques in some of France’s top properties.

The Geoffrey Roberts Award 2011 goes to Sarah Robins of Melbourne, Australia. Currently Director of Marketing and Communications for the Victorian Farmers’ Markets Association. she will use her £3,000 to travel to the US to research the United States’ WIC Farmers’ Market Nutrition Program which makes welfare payment beneficiaries eligible for farmers’ market coupons. Her researches will make a major contribution to making a submission to the Australian government to introduce such a scheme there. More than two million people benefited from the US programme in 2009.  Sarah wants to investigate the benefits and shortcomings of the American scheme so as to maximise its potential effectiveness in Australia. We hope that her researches might even help to introduce similar schemes elsewhere. Read more about Sarah and her proposal here.

Those who would like an award of £3,000/$4,500 towards a really worthwhile journey with a food and/or drink connection should see How to apply and send their applications to geoffreyrobertsa@aol.com between 1 January and 31 March.

For more information email geoffreyrobertsa@aol.com