Last Wednesday night was another awesome gathering  as we celebrated October Awesome Newcastle at the Young Street Hotel! This month we welcomed several returning guest board members including James White of NCS, Lisbeth Pena of the University of Newcastle, Jessica Petersen of Squadron and first time guest board member Natalie Tadros from One Rail.

We had a sensational lineup of finalists as well. Laura Edwards of Swansea Community Centre, Natalie Hogan of The Bridge Project, and Zahli Star Sampson from Starborn Female Fighters Network.

Laura went first. She works at Swansea Community Centre, a not-for-profit organisation supporting individuals and families across Swansea. Her idea is the Crisis Pantry within the organisation which provides essential food and everyday necessities to individuals and families experiencing financial hardship, food insecurity or crisis. She would use to purchase essential food, hygiene products and household necessities for the Swansea Community Centre Crisis Pantry.

Natalia went next. She’s a registered physiotherapist turned youth advocate and founder of The Bridge Project. After experiencing homelessness and challenges as a young person, she’s been speaking publicly about it and supporting young people since 2016. The Bridge Project connects young people aged 12–25 who are navigating tough times to the local support services. She would use the $1,000 to print discreet resource cards with a QR code to her self-referral website, so a young person not ready to speak up in front of peers can quietly take one and reach out later, in private.

Our final finalist was Zahli-Star, a 17-year-old boxer from Newcastle and the founder of Starborn Female Fighters Network. She has seen firsthand how difficult it can be for female fighters to find suitable opponents, sparring partners and connections. She created Starborn to turn that frustration into a free, supportive network giving female boxers across NSW greater visibility and a better chance to fair opportunities. She would use the money to fund a Newcastle and Hunter outreach campaign to grow the pool of registered fighters and create more matching opportunities.

The judges, as always, had a challenging decision to make, but they discussed and debated and at last they decided and board member Natalie awarded the money to the finalist Natalia! Congratulations Natalia! You are well on you way to helping young people of the region, and we are so happy to be a part of it. Congratulations to Zahli-Star and Laura as well for your great ideas!

A reminder that Awesome Newcastle never expires and  we are having our end of year Awesome Newcastle Open-to-the-Public in the Young Street Hotel’s beer garden on November 4th. During this event we bring back great finalists from earlier in the year who didn’t win, so save the date and come see what the fun is about!

PS Also Awesome Newcastle host Alex (and blog writer in chief for Awesome Newcastle) is taking a little career break and will be out of the country for the next 12 months. Alex has quite enjoyed hyping and hosting this Awesome night for many years, and now she is excited to watch the Awesome fun from afar. If you want to keep up with Alex while she is overseas you can subscribe to her Substack, where she generally does not write in 3rd person.