The Yarra Community Awards honour the everyday heroes who make outstanding contributions to our community.

Steven’s story

Steven has had an immense impact on the health and wellbeing of our community through his work supporting Mandarin-speaking residents throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Steven was part of a peer worker program set up by Cohealth during the pandemic. He went above and beyond in his role and volunteered a lot of his time outside regular work hours to personally ensure that older Chinese communities across Yarra had access to testing, vaccinations and information to keep them safe.

He visited over 4000 homes in Yarra to provide information to the Mandarin-speaking community, making sure they received the support they needed and arranging in-home care for residents who were reluctant to leave their homes.

He also reached out to homelessness services and organised the delivery of COVID-19 tests to soup vans and kitchens that didn’t have the resources to organise this themselves.

Congratulations, Steven – and thank you for your ongoing contributions to our community.

The nominees for Citizen of the Year

• Chris Williams – special mention
• Madeleine Heather
• Peter Kaylor
• Madlen Toumbourou
• Maryan Mohamed
• Nhung Do
• Huwieda Idris

Thanks to all our nominees for your contributions to life in Yarra.

Read more stories of our 2022 Community Awards winners.