People 'may forget what you say, do and look like but will never forget how you made them feel' agrees Chamber President.

Zoela's Stories is a new CD containing a selection stories for children. Each story has a specific focus that allows the child to listen and reflect. The main aim says Helena is to help the child build an internal resource to help them deal with the stress of life and growing up. She commented "Zoela's Stories is a useful tool when working with groups of children or at an individual level. Within a group setting children can discuss and explore their own feelings and behaviours and within their peer group decide to change the things that can cause unhappiness or distress to themselves or others. Each story takes no more than a few minutes to listen to allowing the child to absorb the meaning without becoming bored. I would recommend Zoela's Stories to any parent, teacher or counsellor as an intervention within a therapeutic setting."

The Chamber Business School this week explored Sales Skills. For those of you avidly watching "The Apprentice" on BBC you will remember the cringing sales techniques of Michael Sophocles who practically ran after a customer begging him to hire his luxury Ferrari for one hour. For those of you not watching BBC's The Apprentice - Michale Sophocles is a Telesales Executive in London. He describes himself as "unscrupulous in business", and he says he "is single minded and will manipulate others to achieve his goals". Thankfully Michael was fired by Alan Sugar two weeks ago. This method of selling was held up as an example of how not to do it by Harry Harpur from The Loop Training Company who lead a Sales Workshop with over 25 Chamber Members earlier in the week.

18th September - 12.30pm - Venue TBC - Global Issues, Local Impact lunch

Minister Conor Murphy acknowledged that work is progressing well in relation to infrastructure development for the North West. At a private lunch organized by the City's Chamber of Commerce, the Minister outlined the main schemes in the plans.

Over the past number of months Derry businesses have been reporting a marked upturn in Cross Border trade. The weak Euro, coupled with the fact that the current economic climate is encouraging consumers to get the best value for their money has meant that more and more consumers are travelling from south to north to buy essentials such as food and clothes. This coupled with the fact that less of our northern consumers are crossing the border to spend in the eurozone can only be good news for businesses in the northern part of the island.