A Henty woman is among a number of leaders disproving the image of disengaged youth by demonstrating she wants to be involved in her community.
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Ms Bedggood said she was attracted to the program to progress her career as the Henty Bendigo Bank customer relationship manager and to better assist her as a member of the Henty Community Development Committee.
But she said, due to her age, she was perceived as not to be a leader or not to have leadership skills.
"A lot of times people in our community do think sometimes that the younger people are not as involved," she said.
"We do see in community groups a lot of the time it is the older generation that are getting involved, but we do really want to change that and be more active in the community."
As part of the program Ms Beddgood's team of young leaders is planning a street party in Henty to build community morale after COVID-19.
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"COVID has just hit the community really hard, everyone's been a bit down and we just need something to lift it all back up again," she said.
Program coordinator Mary Hoodless said of the program's 18 participants the average age was 36.
"Our biggest cohort is between 20 to 35," she said.
"They're young, they're our emerging leaders, they're really interested in supporting their communities; some of them already have community roles and they were very prepared to take this journey of learning more about leadership.
"It's been very exciting and it's really motivating and invigorating for our communities and we've got a great sense of hope that we've got so many young ones interested in doing this."
Ms Hoodless said when given opportunities, created more opportunities and had often brought with them a different approach to achieving tasks.
"Sometimes the older way isn't the way that they might want to do it and they will bring their youth and their interest and their other ways of communicating and networking and it will work," she said.
"Because they know how to communicate with people at different levels and they've often been away from the community and come back or they've purposely located here as part of a decision with their family."
Program participants were from Henty and Holbrook.
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