This September, the young Golden Plains leaders from the Western Bulldogs Youth Leadership project gathered with Mayor Phelan and 60 friends and family to graduate from their life-changing, 7-month leadership course – and they did it with a big bang!
The 13 local stars presented a video on anti-bullying at the event – a short video they made themselves, and starred in, as part of the Leadership project.
The group identified that bullying is a major issue for young people and wanted to send a message to their peers that it can be prevented through bystander intervention. This is when a person sees bullying taking place, and makes an effort to stop it.
With that vision in mind, they created a short clip with a lasting impact (click the link below to view it). Note, the entire cast is made up of participants from the Youth Leadership project!
While the video was one of the graduation event’s highlights, the participants also received certificates (personally given to them by the Mayor) to acknowledge their participation in the project. Completion of the course is a significant achievement for the participants – the project not only helped to build their confidence and fine-tune their leadership and event management skills, but will look great on their resumes too.
The Youth Leadership project is a collaboration between Golden Plains Shire Council, the Western Bulldogs Community Foundation and Bannockburn District Connected Communities.