After experiencing a string of job losses and mental health issues, youth volunteering has helped Blaze Pilgrim believe she has something positive to offer to the world.
Now, the young leader from the City of Onkaparinga, south of Adelaide, is pioneering a national youth volunteer pilot program to help support others with challenging backgrounds.
Ms Pilgrim fell into volunteering at the age of 24 after coming across a council-run shopping centre retail space selling artworks, jewellery and clothing made by local young people.
When she realised two of her friends were volunteers there, it became easy for her to drop in regularly, eventually leading to her signing up as a volunteer herself.
Ms Pilgrim says her life has drastically changed in the four years since.
From new volunteer to leader
With her leadership skills noticed early on, Ms Pilgrim was recruited for the council youth team and volunteer steering committee, voted in as an executive member, and became a key person to speak about youth programs at dozens of high schools, councils and career expos.
She now volunteers as a secretary for the Aldinga Aero Club, is a youth advisory member for the International Association for Volunteer Effort, helps people across the Fleurieu Peninsula connect with mentors and also collects rubbish through a program called Adopt A Spot.
She has also soared through the ranks to become the Youth into Volunteering coordinator for Southern Volunteering.
Ms Pilgrim has won several awards, some individually and others as part of a team, for her volunteering initiatives, including the National Economic Development Award for excellence in community collaboration in 2018.
But while her rise has been impressive, Ms Pilgrim says the journey began from "a low point" in her life, after being fired from a string of jobs and deemed "unfit for work" due to mental health complexities.
"When I started volunteering, and I started my sole trader business called Digido Studios, it was kind of out of gentle protest for the fact that it didn't feel like there was a place for me out there," she says.
"To begin with, it was kind of me trying to prove myself that I'm not a broken entity.
"That I actually have value, and I've got a lot to offer and sitting in that capacity-building space to learn what was needed to overcome the disadvantages that I have."
The turning point was about 12 months in when she was regularly being asked to speak to local school students about anxiety and mental health and how getting involved in volunteering could help.
"As things have gone along, it has now become about showing others that that's possible," Ms Pilgrim says.
"I realised there's a really big passion in there for sort of trying to uplift the little guy.
"I was a little guy. I found a way to stop being a little guy, and now I'm sort of in a position where I can help others."
As of this year, Ms Pilgrim estimates she has now reached more than 2,500 young people in her local area.
Sharing skills to support others
One of those people is Caitlin Horn, a young woman living with Tourette syndrome who was introduced to Ms Pilgrim as a potential photography work experience candidate.
Ms Pilgrim asked the City of Onkaparinga Youth Enterprise Hub to run an eight-week volunteer program that was a simulated work experience environment to teach Ms Horn the basics of running a photography business.
She says the programme became a success and has run several times since then.
Ms Pilgrim said as part of the initiative they invited businesses to get free photos to increase their reach.
"In that time, I watched Caitlin … go from feeling like her reasoning for everything was, 'I can't because I have Tourette's', to her going, 'You know what? The fact that I have Tourette's is a challenge, but it doesn't stop me.'
"She's just really grown massively in terms of confidence and capability."
Ms Pilgrim says in the past four years, Ms Horn has gone from being a volunteer to starting her own photography business.
Building big things together
Ms Pilgrim has now turned her attention toward a Youth into Volunteering pilot program aimed at simplifying and strengthening the pathways for young people to get into volunteering in their areas.
The pilot's target demographics include unemployed and underemployed job seekers, regional youth, LGBTQI+ people, neurodiverse people and school students, among others.
So far, the program — running in the northern and southern suburbs of Adelaide — has improved connections between schools and volunteer organisations, as well as prompted hundreds of young people to apply to volunteer.
Ms Pilgrim is also looking to create a database of volunteer organisations in South Australia to help connect groups with bodies such as schools to help match volunteers.
She says the database will likely be the first of its kind.
"I've been put in touch with contacts from all of the states and territories in Australia, and I talk to them about what I'm up to, and they've gone, 'Oh my God, Australia needs this. We don't have anything like this," Ms Pilgrim says.
Yet, despite the vast experience and accolades, Ms Pilgrim says her confidence is still a work in progress.
"It's funny because, from a self-esteem perspective, I don't actually feel like that much has changed in the last four years," Ms Pilgrim says.
"I still have a lot of self-doubts, and I still have a lot of second-guessing.
"It's easy to look at others and think, 'Oh, well, they've made it. Now, they're OK'.
"But often those of us that have had sort of challenging backgrounds, even when we get there, and we are succeeding as far as the world deems it, you still have those doubts sometimes."
