DROUIN FEATURE
Drouin Secondary College student Ruby Kelly has received her Gold Award in recognition of her outstanding efforts in the Duke of Edinburgh award.
Ruby previously finished a Silver Award during Year 9 and 10 at Drouin, before working towards her Gold award in Year 11 and 12.
Ruby has spent many weekends volunteering with the Drouin Lions Club, as well as spending time helping BlazeAid fixing fences after the recent bushfires in Gippsland.
Ruby did more than 200 hours of voluntary work with BlazeAid across six months, sacrificing her own time to help others, something she is incredibly passionate about.
“There was a lot of times I had to give up things, but I pushed myself to do it and I took so much out of it,” Ruby said.
She also visited Cambodia on a three-week trip to help build a school and library which helped her fulfill a category needed to attain the award.
“Cambodia was amazing, just to be able to help someone else in another country, you have to learn to communicate without language but you’re still able to do something for someone else to benefit their lives,” Ruby said.
Duke of Edinburgh award co-ordinator Drouin Secondary College teacher Gita Walker said she was extremely proud of Ruby and her achievements.
“I’m unbelievably proud of Ruby and I’ll miss her, we have helped each other a lot and I hope she is able to now go and do something with it as well. We are very lucky that the school supports the subject too, others run it as an extracurricular which means it makes it a lot harder to finish,” Ms Walker said.
Ruby wanted to thank her parents, as well as many community groups including the Drouin CFA and Lions club for helping her.
Since finishing school this year, Ruby has already begun studying and is also one of the youngest members to join the Drouin Lions Club and is now working towards helping children as an integration aid.