Anything that can help businesses to flourish in the current economic downturn is welcome.

Small businesses need all the government encouragement and the Small Business Administration is accepting nominees for the national Small Business Week Awards that is held annually.

There’s a Small Business Person of the Year to be awarded in each state and one national winner. There’s a Young Entrepreneur of the Year as well as a Small Business Exporter of the Year award.

You can’t nominate yourself, of course. You’ll need a local organization to do that. Nomination application forms can be downloaded from this site: http://www.nationalsmallbusinessweek.com/

Just make sure it gets to your local SBA office this Friday, Nov. 13, 2009.