Meet the 2022 Young Australian of the Year finalists dedicating their lives to helping others – ABC News

From personal tragedies and struggles to chance encounters that changed their lives, these inspiringyoung Australians are using their livedexperiences to helpothers.

They are youth leaders, podcasters, business owners, dentists and doctors who are making a difference every day.

One of these eight finalists will become the Young Australian of the Year for 2022.

Sizolwenkosi Fuyana said she spent more time suspended from school than she did learning.

"I was a very disengaged young person at school," she said.

"Coming out of high school I got Ds for all my year 12 exams."

Despite the results, Ms Fuyana managed to land herself a job at a law firm due to her ability to connect and talk to people.

But only months into the job she lost a friend to suicide and her mental health rapidly declined.

"I landed myself in hospital on my first suicide attempt," she said.

After being discharged, she was back in hospital only two weeks later after her second suicide attempt.

"I sat there and the nurse looking after me said to me, 'One day you're going to change the world'," she said.

From there, the Northern Territory Young Australian of the Year embarked on a journey of self care and has become a businesswoman, youth advocate and podcaster.

"I realised if I was still alive for the second time, I had to be here for a reason," she said.

"I didn't know what that purpose was at the time, but I realised I had a purpose."

She started her own business,Fuyana Support, which she uses to engage young people and provide them with the skills they need to succeed.

"Young people are our future leaders, our future politicians," she said.

"We need to empower young people to take on those roles that they have the potential to do.

"By supporting our young people I've seen how they become great leaders and great people who go on to serve their communities."

WA Young Australian of the Year Kendall Whyte has ended up on a veryunexpected journey after a personal tragedy.

In 2008 she lost her 29-year-old brother Jayden to suicide.

"Sadly, like many Australians Jayden struggled with his mental health yet didn't share this with his nearest and dearest," she said.

She believes he kept quiet due to the stigma around mental health that still exists.

Ms Whyte created the Blue TreeProject, inspired by a story shared at her brother's funeral.

"It's a story of him sneaking out one night with a friend to paint a tree blue," she said.

"It was painted out of love and mischief," she said.

What started as a practical joke has flourished into a charity that makes an impact Australia-wide.

Within just two years, the Blue Tree Project has helped facilitate a better understanding of mental health, while providing free education seminars and creating engaging community events within regional Western Australia.

"I share my story, not to share the pain, but to share hope for anyone that is struggling," Ms Whyte said.

"I just want them to know that there is always help out there and there is always someone who wants to be there for you."

When Daniel Nour was in his final year of medicine in London he came across a man having a seizure at a train station.

He stopped to help the man and later learned he was homeless.

Dr Nour spoke to other people around the man, many who were also homeless.

"They had a real sense that their health needs and the healthcare system cared less for them than any other average person in society," he said.

"I couldn't sleep after that."

Dr Nour said he couldn't stop thinking about it, and wanted to do something to help.

Back in New South Wales, he discovered that even with a world-class health systemthere were still barriers limiting access.

The New South WalesYoung Australian of the Yearcreated Street Side Medics, a mobile medical service dedicated to those experiencing homelessness.

"We started in July 2020 with two volunteers, and we've grown the team now to 220 volunteers with two vans and have served over 500 patients," he said.

The two vans areset up as a medical clinic and visitshelters across New South Wales for free and with no need for a Medicare card.

"I don't want to leave a single person unable to access healthcare."

Growing upin Melbourne's northern suburbs,Ahmed Hassan attended one of themost culturally diverse schools in Victoria.

"It was a real privilege. It taught me a lot personally, not about myself but aboutother people and their backgrounds," he said.

Buthe saw some of his peers living with major disadvantage.

"Young people who had no-one in their household employed, no form of transportation at home," he said.

"They had little to no food at times in their households."

When he was in year 10, Mr Hassan noticed a gapin services for young people.

"Many of the services that were meant to assist vulnerable young people weren't really connecting with the young people they were meant for," he said.

"A lot of those young people kept falling through the cracks."

Straight out of school, the Victorian Young Australian of the Yearset up not-for-profit organisation Youth Activating Youth with fellow community leader and chief executive Ali Ahmed.

It assistsdisadvantaged multiculturalyouth.

"It's a platform for these young people to really express themselves, and a platform that is for youth by youth."

Kaytlyn Johnson saw only three of her regional Tasmanian high school peers go on to university.

She wants that to changeand doesn't want a postcode to determine someone's future.

"Growing up in an isolated community like Wynyard presents disadvantages in the form of financial disadvantage, educational disadvantage and a lack of opportunity for young people," she said.

The youth leader said it was driven home when a school-organised work experience program placed students with businesses within one kilometreof the school.

"This experience highlighted the notion that young people in these rural areas are not being supported to dream and to have aspirations beyond a one-kilometre radius of their high school," she said.

"That also allowed me to realise that I need to advocate for young people and young Indigenous people who have the potential to create change not just on a local level but a national level and a global scale.

"I have been able to advocate for youth empowerment, Indigenous empowerment, social justice and climate change."

Ms Johnson said she experienced cultural struggles as a Palawa woman with pale skin growing up in a conservative rural community where Aboriginal history was barely taught in school.

"I didn't get to connect to culture as much as I would have liked to," she said.

Ms Johnson is Tasmania's Young Australian of the Year and is also a talented singer-song writer and has had her music featured on triple j Unearthed.

When Sean Dondas was just a teenager he lost his mother to cancer and became a ward of the state.

"We were a tight-knit family. It was mum, my two younger brothers and myself," he said.

When he was 14, his mother informed the family that her cancer had returned.

"There was massive uncertainty in our lives. We didn't know if mum would survive, we didn't know how long she'd have the treatment for and what this meant for the rest of our childhood, our schooling and our lives," he said.

"There weren't really people in my life who understood what I was going through."

A social worker at the hospital passed on information about cancer support organisation CanTeen, a simple gesture that would change his life.

The ACT Young Australian of the Year joined CanTeen in 2008 and has spent the past 13 years supporting others going through similar situations through his work in various leadership roles.

"I could always count on CanTeen to provide me with the appropriate support and services I needed to deal with the cancer experience I'd gone through," he said.

"I realised I could also make an impact, and young people in CanTeen had inspired me to give back."

His input has helped shape decisions on a range of vital strategies, including clinical trials, youth cancer services, community-based support, and an online support community and counselling services.

"I want young people who are going through a similar experience [to know] that it isn't the end;you can rebuild from this and there is a future for you."

When Tahnee Bridson was in her final year of medical school she lost a dear friend to suicide, a well-known doctor who was her community's general practitioner.

Faced with grief and the pressures of finishing her studies, Bridson was diagnosed with anorexia nervosa.

"At this point in my life I felt incredibly alone and like I was the only person in medicine that could possibly be going through this," she said.

It wasn't until later that she released she wasn't alone, and that healthcare workers all over Australia and the world were also facing issues such asdepression, anxiety, burnout and eating disorders.

"Unfortunately there's so much stigma attached to this, and old-school mentality that for some reason as healthcare workers we're meant to be heroes and can't ask for help or tell people we're struggling," she said.

Dr Bridson, who is the Queensland Young Australian of the Year, decided to take action and came up with the idea for Hand-n-Hand Peer Support.

It provides free confidential peer-to-peer support for all health workers across Australia and New Zealand.

While it started off as a small group chat, even after 24 hours of its inception 400 healthcare workers had reached out for support.

"This grew exponentially over the next few months as COVID came into Australia and had an impact on our health system," she said.

"Our jobs are so stressful and they demand so much of people. If we don't look after our healthcare workers we won't have them there to look after us."

Trudy Lin knows the power of a smile.

The SA Young Australian of the Year is a special needs dentistry consultant at Adelaide Dental Hospital.

Dr Lin provides oral healthcare to people with disability, psychiatric illness, and complex medical issues such as cancer.

She also treats people experiencing homelessness and domestic violence.

Her passion grew from her own family's experience with the health system.

"My youngest brother was diagnosed with autism, and my grandmother was diagnosed with cancer, and I saw that oral health had an even bigger impact on their lives," she said.

"They were finding it difficult to find a dentist that understood those issues and had the skills to help them with it.

"That's how I ended up wanting to specialisein special needs dentistry, to help other people who were facing similar challenges."

Growing up, her father struggled with oral health and had a condition that made his teeth look black.

"He didn't even like to go outside or go out for a meal and smile at other people," she said.

"He felt really isolated because wasn't able to connect with others through the simple gesture of smiling at someone else," she said.

"This really led me to want to help others to have their smile and to be able to eat properly and integrate themselves into society."

Dr Lin has completed a research thesis on implementing a triaging tool to improve oral healthcare access for people with disability, and this work has received multiple accolades, including the 2020 Australian and New Zealand division winner of the International Association of Dental Research Poster Competition.

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Meet the 2022 Young Australian of the Year finalists dedicating their lives to helping others - ABC News