Hailing from different states and diverse backgrounds, the finalists for the Australian of the Year Local Hero award have worked to make Australia a fairer and more connected place.
From providing food relief after disasters to helping migrant women find their voice and battling to fix the gap in mental health services, these people have gone above and beyond for their communities.
Standing out for good reasons
Amar Singh says long beards and turbans make Sikhs like him stand out, but he wants to stand out for “all the good reasons”.
“Our turban symbolises hope, equality and a person you can go to for help,” Mr Singh, the Australian of the Year Local Hero for New South Wales, said.
After experiencing racial slurs and insults, Mr Singh wanted to show people that they did not need to be afraid of differences. He set up Turbans 4 Australia to provide food relief for people experiencing food insecurity in Western Sydney.
Since its foundation, Turbans 4 Australia has travelled across the country to provide hampers for people impacted by drought, bushfires, floods, cyclones and COVID-19.
“I think our purpose is to bring people together,” Mr Singh said.
“No matter where we come from, what our culture is, what our religion is, what our ethnic background is.”
Supporting struggling young mothers
Melissa Redsell felt alone and isolated when she became pregnant with her daughter as a teenager.
“I then went on to hear that I had ruined my life and that my life would amount to nothing by being pregnant at the age of 16,” Ms Redsell, the Australian of the Year Local Hero for Queensland, said.
“I was so determined to not let those words define my future.”
Ms Redsell drew from her experience being a young mother and a single parent to set up A Brave Life, a charity that provides newborn essentials and pathways to education and employment for young mums who were struggling, in 2015.
“I want to be able to create change so that a young mother doesn’t have to experience what I did,” Ms Redsell said.
“That she doesn’t have to strive to prove that she’s worthy enough to be a mother.”
Helping migrant women find their voice
Dr Shamaruh Mirza knew something needed to be done when she noticed women from diverse backgrounds were “suffering in silence”.
In 2017, she founded the peer support network charity SiTara’s Story, which aims to bring women together to speak to each other without judgement and learn basic skills like writing a resume or get legal aid.
“I thought we needed to do something for these women to help them find their voices,” Dr Mirza, the Australian of the Year Local Hero for the Australian Capital Territory, said.
Dr Mirza says the charity helps women from culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) backgrounds become more confident in themselves, which helps them start their “own journey of empowerment”.
“We always tell them … be proud of your identity and be visible,” Dr Miza said.
“They’re already quite resilient because they know very well what’s waiting for them, but they don’t know how to adapt.
“SiTara’s Story shows the empathy for these women and helps them find their voices.”
Driving mental health education
The Northern Territory has twice the number of mental health patients per capita than the national average, yet the lowest number of services.
This inequality inspired social worker Sacha King to set up her own charity to deliver accredited mental health training and community workshops.
“Knowing that there was such a gap in mental health education and how strongly I feel for us needing to know what is mental health … to look after our health, I couldn’t just leave this gap and do nothing about it,” Ms King, the Australian of the Year Local Hero for the Northern Territory, said.
Ms King founded Two Two One, which is a reference to having two ears, two eyes and one mouth. The name reinforces the idea of its workshops being safe spaces where people are listened to twice as much as spoken to.
“When people come to have conversations about mental health we quite often jump to problem solving,” Ms King said.
“What people really want is to feel listened to, so they can have the capacity to come up with their own solutions.”
The ‘unique’ gift of volunteering
“It is such a reward to me when I can help people,” volunteer ambulance officer Keith Parker, the Australian of the Year Local Hero for Tasmania, said.
Mr Parker had his eyes opened while posted overseas with the military, when he saw the tremendous work done by the “unsung heroes” — aid workers.
“They’re the ones that went in first,” Mr Parker said.
“As a matter of fact, they’re still there in some form.”
This experience inspired him to become a volunteer ambulance officer for Ambulance Tasmania in Sheffield. Since joining in 2011, he has contributed over 1,500 hours a year as a first responder to medical emergencies.
“When someone’s having a very bad day, I think if you can make that a little bit better for them, then that’s a fairly unique gift you can give,” Mr Parker said.
Reuniting people with their ‘rock’
Christine Robertson knows how pets can be the supportive “rock” people need, especially after her experience with cancer and heart failure.
She founded Lost Pets of South Australia in 2013, which utilised social media to help reunite owners with their missing animals.
It was through this work she discovered many pets were becoming lost because owners could not afford to give them a microchip.
Ms Robertson brought the cost of chipping down from $65 to $10 through the Chipblitz program she founded in 2015. Over 65,000 pets across the state have been chipped by the program since.
“What we’d like to see is Australia be a nation where the basic necessities of pet ownership are affordable and accessible to everybody,” Ms Robertson said.
Connecting mothers to improve resilience
“It all began when I fell off the ladder,” Belinda Young, the Australian of the Year Local Hero for Victoria, said.
Ms Young was painting when she fell and realised that if she even had a serious injury, none of her neighbours would have heard her. She knew she had to address the isolation in her region.
Ms Young founded the Facebook group Mums of the Hills in 2015 to help connect mothers in the Yarra and Dandenong ranges. It has since reached over 5,000 members and provides a reliable place to find practical information to prepare for storms and bushfires.
She has also helped advocate for better services in her area and supported mothers escaping domestic violence.
“To make our community sustainable, we need our mums to feel like they are supported,” Ms Young said.
“We’ve finally gotten our mums a voice to express how they are feeling at a really personal level.”
Positivity and proactivity to build communities
James Murphy regularly attended protests in his twenties, frustrated with the lack of action on climate change. When the Occupy movement started, he began to question the impact his actions were having.
“Rather than protesting against what I didn’t like, I could actually make change through positive contribution,” Mr Murphy, the Australian of the Year Local Hero for Western Australia, said.
As the local event manager, he was approached by locals to help organise a street festival. The experience prompted Mr Murphy to found Town Team Movement.
Town Team Movement is made up of local residents and businesses to work proactively with local government to bring their community together, such as putting on community events, introducing community gardens or more street art.
There are now 115 Town Teams across Australia working to make their communities more lively.
“It improves the vibrancy, the vitality, the connection of their town centres, it supports local businesses, it brings residents together,” Mr Murphy said.
“Our job is to cheer them on and to get the barriers out of the way for them to be able to do good in their own places.”
