Youth Awards celebrate community’s young leaders

FOR the first time in fifteen years, this month’s City of Ballarat Youth Awards will be held online.

Celebrating Ballarat residents aged 12 to 25, the ceremony will acknowledge 78 young nominees and ally workers who have positively impacted the community.

An initiative of the City’s Youth Council, the awards have various categories to showcase diverse people and their endeavours; challenge and change, group project, leadership in sport, influential artist, positive leader, compassion and care, youth volunteer, STEM or young entrepreneur.

Youth councillor, Brodie Kamp said it’s “important to recognise the great things that young people are doing for our community in Ballarat.”

His leadership team has coordinated the event to highlight the proactive, creative, impactful things youths are doing daily in the community, and provide a space for them to network, connect and find likeminded people.

“Even the smallest contribution is something to be celebrated,” he said.

“It doesn’t matter if you think your nominee is going to win or not. We make a real effort to make sure that every person feels valued for their contribution.”

The Youth Awards ceremony will be streamed live from 7pm on Friday, 18 September, with a Welcome to Country by Uncle Barry, a talk with ambassadors Shon Dunn and Shelby Sherritt, and performances by Meraki Minds, Butterfunked, Cassells and Raro

Anyone can head to facebook.com/ballaratyouthservices to watch the action.

Buninyong and District Community Bank, Highlands LLEN, Voice FM, Basketball Ballarat, Wendouree Centre for Performing Arts, the YMCA, Upstart, Compassionate Ballarat, Western Bulldogs and Ballarat Tech School are all supporters.