Lions Youth of the Year is designed to encourage, foster and develop leadership in conjunction with other citizenship qualities in our youth, at the age when they are about to enter the fields of employment or higher education. It provides students with the incentive to pay greater attention to the general qualities, so vital in developing our
youths into first class citizens. The qualities sought, apart from academic attainment are those of leadership, personality, sportsmanship, public speaking and good citizenship.
Six students applied for the awards for their chance to be the overall Lions Youth of the Year or the Public Speaking Award, scrutinised by a panel of distinguished judges including Amy Shine (Forbes PreSchool Director), Mrs Helen Pitt(retired teacher) and Ken Walton(National Bank representative). Students firstly, had to submit an application,
similar to what they would if applying for a job or university, which was assessed by the judges. Successful applicants were then interviewed by the judging panel and given a score for both the written application and interview which made up 80% of their overall total.
Participants were given the opportunity to prepare a 5 minute speech to be presented at the awards presentation on a topic of their choice and the final element of the awards was two impromptu questions which they were allocated 2 minutes to answer. Forbes High School, Parkes High School and Red Bend Catholic College each had two students representing and all contestants performed exceptionally well. Students were supported by family, friends and their teachers who were all very proud of their efforts. The competition was extremely tight and a delighted Kelly Yoon
from Parkes High School was announced the winner of both the Public Speaking and Overall Youth of the Year Award at the conclusion of the judging.