Philanthropy is commonly a foreign and quite often unglamorous

concept for young people. In saying that, philanthropy is a crucial

driving force for many organisations, which make our society the
fair, well oiled-machine that we classify as normal today.
The Lord Mayors Charitable Foundation (LMCF) runs an innovative
program called Youth in Philanthropy (YIP). The program involves
secondary school students taking the reigns during their grant
application processing stages. As students gain real life experiences,
their perception of philanthropy transforms. That is the aim of the
program; to convince young people that giving back and
contributing to your community can be rewarding not only to
society, but also personally.
Ringwood was lucky enough to be one of the many schools involved,
each of whom brought their own team of eager students into the
program.
Charities submit a grant application to LMCF regarding a specific
project for which they are trying to source funding. RSC was
assigned The Songroom, the Kevin Heinze Garden Centre and
Women with Disabilities Victoria, all three focusing on varied but
very important issues in Australian Society.
Our task was to spread $15,000 between all of our three allocated
charities. Each schools individual set of criteria determined how this
money was distributed.
The Ringwood teams criterion focused on whether the program was
addressing the most prevalent and fundamental issues in our
society and the amount of people it would impact, alongside many
other factors.
To help us understand the essence of each charity and enquire
about finer details of their proposals, we had the opportunity to visit
each of them. This helped us during our decision making process as
well as opening our minds to the amazing work the different
organisations do in the community.
As a grand finale to the program, we all had to pitch our final grant
proposal to the foundation committee as well as a large crowd of
family members and other important guests.
Ringwood brought to the table their own creative spin to the pitch,
with a short video of our endeavours during YIP.
I can speak for the whole YIP crew at Ringwood when I say that
being part of such an amazing foundation over the course of the
program and being given the responsibility to have an influence in
such significant matters was a true eye opener and quite inspiring. I
now realise the difference that just simply volunteering my time
could have in the community.
I hope Youth in Philanthropy will continue to inspire for some time to
come.