2023 Citizen of the Year - Glenys Matthews
2023 Citizen of the Year - Glenys Matthews
For over 45 years, Glenys has made an outstanding contribution to the education of young people. Glenys has worked tirelessly providing students with extra opportunities both in and beyond their in-class education. Aside from her schoolwork, Glenys has organised school camps and trips, community events and fundraisers and applied for extra funding through grants.
As part of her volunteer work, Glenys has assisted in the setting up shop window displays as part of the Barmera Centenary celebrations, assisting in the writing and editing of the Barmera Centenary Book. She has also volunteered and helped run other community events such as the Riverland All Cars Day (2003 to 2015), the Big River Regional Street Road Nationals (2006 and 2012) and the Barmera Centenary Auto Street Party (2021).
Glenys is an advocate for environmental education and has encouraged young people to take an interest in the community as seen when Barmera not only took out the 2017 KESAB Tidy Town Award, but also and Environmental Education Award and the Young Legends Award. In addition to this, over the past 10 years, Glenys has given Barmera Primary and other primary school students across the Riverland, the opportunity to take part in the Barmera Primary School Environmental Expo. This event was inspired by what Glenys had seen of students running workshops to educate each other at the Kids Teaching Kids event. Glenys liaises with a range of other community individuals, groups and organisations.
Glenys’ dedication to her work, her passion for environment and volunteering highlights her selfless drive to help others, always going above and beyond to support others.