What do the well-known names Kevin Rudd, Peter Beattie, ABC’s Sabra Lane, Senator Simon Birmingham and Good Shepherd Year 12 student Jolie May have in common?

They are all past participants of the Lions Youth of the Year Program.

Jolie recently took part in the district finals of the Lions Youth of the Year competition in Bundaberg on 19 March.

This follows her success at the regional finals at the Sunrise Beach Uniting Church on 12 March, where she was awarded the overall finalist for the region.

Jolie represented the Tewantin Noosa Lions Club, as well as Good Shepherd, at the district finals in Bundaberg.

A range of students from St Patrick’s College in Gympie, Rockhampton Grammar School, and Bundaberg State High School took part as regional finalists.

Each student needed to prepare a formal application form detailing their community, leadership, sporting, cultural, and academic achievements, as well as respond to a series of questions in a formal interview with a panel of community members.

The public speaking component involved contestants responding to two unseen questions and presenting a prepared five- minute speech on a topic of their choice.

The impromptu questions at the district finals focused on students identifying the main issues affecting young people in today’s world and what strategies could help overcome some of the challenges that they were facing.

Jolie received the Public Speaking award, and the overall winning student was Harshitha Peddireddy from the Rockhampton-Fitzroy Lions Club.

Head of senior years studies at Good Shepherd, Matt Armstrong said, “The Lions Youth of the Year Program is a fabulous program designed to encourage, foster and develop leadership in conjunction with other citizenship qualities in our youth, just as they are about to enter the fields of employment or higher education.

“At Good Shepherd we see it as our duty to provide students with the incentive to pay greater attention to the general qualities, so vital in developing our students into first class citizens.”

Mr Armstrong was very impressed by Jolie’s performance.

“It has been wonderful to see Jolie’s participation in the competition go from strength to strength, and we commend her on reaching this level of representation. Well done, Jolie.”

Good Shepherd principal Anthony Dyer said, “The College has proudly been participating in this very valuable competition for many years.

“We encourage student interest in leadership and the qualities required to take an active and constructive role in the community and we look forward to following Jolie in her future endeavours.”