Wednesday 29
April
2009
YOUTH ACHIEVEMENT AWARDS 2009.
Last meeting was a Presentation for
the Youth Achievement Awards . This was a night organised by Rotary and
Strathfield Council
Announcing the Awards are
Rotarian Tony Lanzafame, Strathfield Mayor Keith Kwon and Nicole
Andary from Strathfield Council
The Youth Achievement Awards
are in recognition of the young people within our local, Strathfield
area. Strathfield Council and The Rotary Club of Strathfield have
worked in partnership to establish these awards to recognise the
important contributions that young people make within the community
and all are in agreement that these achievements deserve
recognition.
The Awards are open to all
young people aged 12 to 24 years who reside, train, work or study in
the Strathfield Municipality. All young people are encouraged to
become involved and participate in the awards.
There are 6 categories for the
awards:-
The Youth Achievement Awards
are currently in their sixth year. Nomination forms were sent out to
all local schools, youth groups, colleges, sporting clubs, TAFE
College’s and all relevant organisations that young people frequent.
All the nominees were of an exceptionally high standard and the
panel had a difficult time deciding due to the many achievements the
nominees had achieved at such a young age. This year’s awardees are
presented with their Certificate and cash prize by Rotary President
Grahame True and Strathfield Mayor Keith Kwon:-
Arts & Culture
This
year we have jointly awarded this prize. The first recipient is
Maha Chahine.
Maha attended Strathfield South High School in 2008 and is
currently studying for a BSc degree at UWS, Hawkesbury. Maha was
the chair of the Steering committee which planned and
implemented the activities for a joint project with Windsor
High, “We are all Australian”. Her role included organisation of
meetings with a partner school (Windsor High), excursions,
workshops and filming of the events. Crucial to this was the
development of a storyboard outline that told the story of two
different youth cultures meeting, developing relationships and
exploring stereotypes based on ethnicity. The project was known
as the “Harmony Project” at Strathfield South High School, and
was aimed to reduce “racial stereotyping” particularly within
the municipality in which we live, work and study. Maha also had
the role of interviewer and narrator in the film that was
produced. The film has been sent out to all schools in NSW to
help combat racism.
Our
second recipient is Shizu Duo. In the
last two years, Shizu has been involved in a wide variety of
musical activities. She completed the HSC course for Music 2 and
Music Extension as an accelerant last year whilst in year 10.
She achieved a band 6 in both courses, was also nominated for
ENCORE. She received first place in both courses. Shizu is an
active member of the college Orchestra and Chamber Ensemble, and
has played at many important liturgies and functions inside
school both during and out of school hours. Shizu has been
selected to perform at the Emerging Artists Series 2009 held by
Theme & Variations Sydney. Shizu has won a number of prizes
including a people’s choice award and overall 1st place in the
school’s annual Festival of Music.
Community Service
This
year’s recipient for Community Service is
Michael Gordon.
Michael is currently in Year 12 at St Patrick’s College,
Strathfield. Michael has been in Scouting since he was seven
years old, working his way through and completing the Award and
Badge system, attending numerous camps and the Jamborees, a
major camp where all Scouts attend from Australia and
Internationally every three years. It was from this experience
that Michael decided to give something back to the community and
became a Cub Scout volunteer. Michael volunteers his time every
week teaching different Cub activities. Michael also assesses
the Cubs for their Awards and can sign off that they have
completed their activity or award with competency. This is
usually conducted on a one on one basis as each Cub is at
varying levels of their Awards. In addition to Michael managing
his full time study load and his weekly commitment to Cubs,
giving up his time freely, he also volunteered at Meals on
Wheels for the July 2008 school holidays; attended many and
various Social Justice activities organised by St Patrick’s
College at Strathfield; trained and earned his Senior First Aid
Certificate; volunteered his service at Cubs and at Cub Camps;
trained and earned an Occupational Health and Safety (OH&S) card
where he has used these safety skills at Cubs during craft, wood
work and other activities; completed the Bronze Duke of
Edinburgh Award in 2006; completed the Silver Duke of Edinburgh
Award in 2007; completed the Gold Duke of Edinburgh Award and is
awaiting his Award and is a member of the Under 17 years
Basketball and Soccer team for St Patrick’s College.
Environment, Science and
Technology
Melanie
Raumer was the
Deputy Environment Leader as part of the Student Committee and
had an integral role in designing and instituting a new paper
recycling system across the secondary campus at Santa Sabina
(Middle School and Secondary School). Previously, the campus did
not have an effective recycling system, due to the issues with
rubbish being collected in the paper recycling bins and the
overall attitude of students and staff towards the recycling
process. However, last year a new system was established and has
been running successfully across both Middle and Secondary
school. Through implementing this new system, Melanie had to
re-educate the staff and students on how the new system works,
and the items that can actually be recycled. It may seem simple,
but the majority of her time was spent trying to break bad, old
habits. Melanie had to speak at numerous school assemblies (for
both Secondary and Middle schools). Every Friday morning Melanie
spent collecting the recycling and sorting it . Once Melanie had
worked through any issues, she then had the challenge of
supervising homeroom groups as they partook in collecting and
sorting. Considering that every Friday a new homeroom (hence new
staff member and new group of 14+ girls) was on recycling duty,
every Friday she had to work at getting the girls to do the task
properly. Keeping this in mind, it is quite an amazing feat that
Melanie could, on average, have all the recycling collected and
sorted within half an hour to forty minutes. Previously, the
Santa Sabina recycling bin was in such a horrendous state, that
no one would collect the recycling, now they are lucky to find
10 pieces of non-recyclable material in the recycling bin.
Individual Sports – Junior
Category
Lucy
Humphries was the
Overall — Australian Female Youth Champion in Mogul Skiing 2008.
Lucy won every mogul competition in the female youth division in
2008. Lucy was 1st in NSW junior mogul championships Perisher
Blue, series I and II; 1st in Australian Freestyle
Championships, Perisher Blue (August 2008); 1st in ABOM mogul
challenge, Mt Buller (August 2008). Lucy trains with the
Perisher Blue Winter Sports Club Freestyle team every weekend of
the ski season and all of the June/July school holidays. Lucy
has represented Meriden in the ski team to a National level
every year since 2001 (age 6). She has been awarded a Highest
Achievement Award for sports at Meriden every year since 2001.
She trains at a water jump camp in Melbourne three times a year
and has recently been asked to train with the Australian Aerial
ski team on the water jump in April 2009. Lucy was awarded a
SERAS (South East Regional Academy of Sport) scholarship in 2008
for mogul skiing. Lucy is also the 2008 Female State
trampolining Champion for under 14 years, competing at National
Trampoline Championships in Bendigo with the NSW team. She
trains 4 x per week with the Ryde RSL youth club. Lucy also
represents Meriden in the following sports:
• Aerobic gymnastics — training 4 x per week
• Cross-country running
• Athletics and during summer
• Diving (school junior champion 2009)- training once a week
(summer term only)
• Softball — training once a week, competing once a week (summer
term only)
Lucy is keen to make it into NSWIS (New South Wales Institute of
Sport) for mogul skiing, aerial skiing and/or trampolining and
represent Australia in World Cups and the Olympics.
Individual Sports – Senior
Category
Christopher Ashwood
has gone from strength to strength. His achievements are as
follows
• Trans-Tasman series 2nd 800m 3rd 400m freestyle
• New Zealand championships 1st 1500m freestyle and 2nd 400m
Freestyle
• Australian Age Championship 1 150m
• Australian Open Olympic Trial 8th in the final of 1500 free
• Australian Short Course 7th in 1500
• NSW State Age 1st 1500 1st in the 400 freestyle
• NSW State Open Championships 2nd 1500m
• Christopher hold 4 NSW swimming records & 4 NSW metropolitan
records
• Australian Junior Flippers Squad
• Australian Junior Team Trans Tasman
• NSW Institute of sport emerging athlete programme
Christopher is also the captain of swimming at St Pats and leads
by example. He also looks out for younger squad members and
gives them words of encouragement. Unfortunately, Christopher
couldn’t attend on the presentation night as he was competing in
a swim meet.
Team Sports Award
The St Patrick’s First
Eleven Cricket Team comprised of
Michael Galbraith
Nick Iaquinto
Andrew Squillacioti
James Collins
Tristan Ofner
Justin O’Neil
Alex Bloomfield Nick Khalifeh
Declan Kennedy
Isaac Taylor
James Matthey
Vince Cerone
Clinton Doughan
James Wohlfiel
Coach – Justin Newman
Manager – Mark Tyler
Isaac Taylor thanks
and acknowledges the awards
-
The
team lost 3 out 4 of their first four games
-
They competed in the
Australasian Christian Brothers cricket carnival in Brisbane
and beat teams from WA, Qld and NZ to reach the final by .03
of a quotient point. In every game they looked like loosing
until great team spirit lead to victory.
-
They chased 215 runs to
win. This was only the 2nd time in 33 years that St Pats has
won.
-
The 1st XI went on to
win the ISA Cricket as well in the final.
-
They were undefeated in
their last 19matches.
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