A date and speaker have been set for this year’s Greater Picayune Area Chamber of Commerce Awards Banquet.

Chamber Director April Parsons said the banquet will take place on Thursday, Nov. 4, from 6 to 8:30 p.m. at The Link on Goodyear Boulevard.

This year’s speaker will be U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., who has been serving in public office in one form or another since 1987. He serves on the Senate Armed Services Committee, the Foreign Relations Committee, the Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee, the Veterans’ Affairs Committee and the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee, according to his website.

Parsons said tickets for the event are now on sale at $30 per ticket. Anyone interested in reserving a table can do so by purchasing six tickets at once.

Businesses can become a sponsor of the event for $125.

Nominations for the awards will be accepted until Friday, Oct. 15. Parsons said nominations can be submitted in person, via fax or online by visiting the Chamber’s Web site at, http://www.picayunechamber.org/index.htm and clicking on the green text in the Awards Banquet paragraph of the home page.

The nomination process has been streamlined to make it easier, Parsons said. Nominations are being sought for Citizen of the Year, Civic Club of the Year and Volunteer of the Year.

To be eligible for a nomination as Citizen of the Year, that person must have been a resident of the Greater Picayune Area for at least 10 years, demonstrated community leadership and participated in community activities that would improve the area’s quality of life, according to the nomination form. Nominees must not have been honored in the past, cannot hold or be qualified to run for public office and must reside in the Greater Picayune Area, which includes nearby communities outside the city limits of Picayune.

Nominees for Volunteer of the Year should be civic minded and have extraordinary achievements under their belt from working with their club, organization or group without financial gain, the nomination form states.

Civic Club of the Year nominees should include clubs that consist of civic minded men and women who conduct regular projects that promote community well-being. Nominees in that category must not have been honored as Civic Club of the Year in the past five years and must be a non-profit organization.