Banyule Youth Summit

On the 22nd of May, three outstanding students from Greensborough College participated in the 2025 Banyule Council’s Youth Summit at the Heidelberg Golf Club.  Ethan Barry, Shaun Beasley & Lily Witnish represented our college amongst approximately 200 students selected for the event.  The Youth Summit is part of the Council’s vision to include young people in a range of contemporary issues which impact their lives & futures.  Students from across the area advised on thirteen different areas including the environment, culture & community safety.   

After working all day, our students gave presentations to a full room including, Mayor Elizabeth Nealy, Counsellors and the Federal Member for JagaJaga, Kate Thwaites. These presentations will help guide the plan for Banyule Youth Services for the next two years.  Our students were eloquent, expressive and excellent representatives who spoke with confidence to a room of hundreds. 

Here is what they had to say:

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The opportunity to be a part of the Youth Summit and voice my concerns and solutions to issues was exciting and fun. The day itself was one I’ll never forget, the ideas and conversations happening around the room were outstanding and the fact I was able to share mine and improve of others was great. Banyule youth helped make the day even more fun, since they organised things for us to do outside of the round table, there were games and trivia (not to mention the free goodie bag we got) and the whole environment added to the excellence of the day. Finally, the highlight of the day for me was when I was selected to represent my table and give a speech about our ideas. 

Lily Witnish  

The Banyule Youth Summit was an amazing opportunity to, not just get the chance to express my opinions and help make the recommendations a success but also getting to step up as a member of the youth summit representatives. This involved building discussions on my table about how to improve youth futures, this included various programs on getting unemployed students into the workforce and allowing young people express their opinions to the summit representatives easier. Another role I performed was giving a speech to introduce the reading of the summit recommendations, which thankfully was a smashing success.  

 Ethan Barry 

I had the opportunity of attending the Youth Summit for 2025. I was on the community safety table where we discussed issues like youth crime and problems within our community. We created a vision and possible resolutions on how to solve problems are community safety and presented to the summit representatives. 

Shaun Beasley