Citizen of the Year
Nick King
Nick has dedicated his career and countless volunteer hours to his local community. He is an educator of at-risk youth, finding pathways to, and re-engagement with education.
In his local community, Nick recognised the need for safe and accessible spaces for children and young people to gather and be active and social. Nick’s community volunteerism started at a young age in Gippsland, as an educator, lifeguard, and active mountain biker. He has contributed many volunteer hours to events, and mentoring many local youths, and up and coming mountain bike riders.
In volunteering his time, Nicholas envisaged a local space that encouraged all ages, but particularly young people to be active; and as a founding member of Gippsland MTB mountain biking club, he successfully designed, negotiated, bid for and won two government grants to build a Haunted Hills Mountain bike park for all ages in Latrobe City.
Nick continues to strive to achieve better infrastructure for Latrobe Valley, and volunteers his time and labour to build a better, more active local community. His effort and dedication have not only built a heavily used active space for young people, families and people of all ages and abilities, but bring visitors and tourism to his much-loved local community.
Senior Citizen of the Year
Peter Keenan
Peter has completed over 47 years of service in the CFA. At present he is the first Captain of the Morwell Brigade in 50 Years. He looks after the welfare of members and training as well as turning out to fire calls.
Peter has been an intrinsic part of the brigade and community safety as a whole.
He is a life member of the Latrobe Valley Umpires Association after 27 years of service.
He is very active in the Gippsland Dog Obedience Club and is a life member. He also was Royal Children’s Hospital AEP for fundraising in Morwell for 25 years.
Young Citizen of the Year
William Morgan
William has shown tremendous leadership with the program Kickback. He has become a youth leader among his peers. This group is for young Aboriginal people who are at risk of offending. It is used to promote prosocial relationships with safe adults, including Police, Youth Justice and other organisations.
William encourages engagement with all of the adults in the group and helps foster solid relationships between adults and young people. He has shown outstanding leadership and drives to embed cultural ways into the other young people participating in the program.
William feels that by building young people's cultural strength, it will build their confidence to be part of the community.
William leads by example, aiming to start his own business doing cultural dancing and art across the Latrobe region.
Community Event of the Year
Club Astoria - German Club Morwell Oktoberfest
Club Astoria Morwell celebrated its 65th birthday in 2023, along with its 20th Oktoberfest celebration. Organised over ten months and supported by over 50 volunteers from the committee and the club, Oktoberfest celebrates the marriage of Prince and Princess Therese back in Munich, Germany.
This event takes place within the club grounds and clubrooms and features house made cakes and coffee, house made sauerkraut, potato cakes, schnitzel and kranksys, bratwurst, knackwurst and German beverages. Event attendees often wear traditional German costumes, adding to the overall atmosphere of the event.
Club Astoria’s Oktoberfest is a much-loved event within the community and a credit to the hard-working committee and members.
Community Service of the Year
Latrobe Central Group of the Country Women's Association - Family Violence Refuge Starter Kits
After identifying a need to support people and families leaving family violence the region, Latrobe Central Group member Sam Soutar established the Family Violence Refuge Starter Kits Program. The idea came from a similar project being run by a CWA group in Western Australia and offers recipients basic household items needed so they can have a fully functioning kitchen, laundry, and bathroom.
Despite the challenges of COVID-19 making it difficult to officially launch the program, the group were able to promote the program locally and gain significant community support through hosting collection weekends at Kmart in Moe and Traralgon. Through collection weekends and ongoing fundraising, the group collected over $15,000 worth of items, gift cards and cash.
Throughout the planning stages Sam liaised with all Latrobe Valley service agencies who support those escaping family violence to develop protocols to ensure transparency, and correct processes are followed to ensure the correct recipients receive the kits.
They are now a contact for local agencies when they have a person or family transitioning to independent living and prepare and deliver kits when required. So far, 25 families have been assisted and they have supplies for another 100 recipients.
The Latrobe Central Group is made up of 11 Country Women’s Association Branches from Flynn to Bunyip.