The Awards
Each year, South Australia celebrates the achievements and contributions of outstanding members of their communities through the Citizen of the Year Awards. These individuals demonstrate extraordinary service every day within our communities so often invisible to most of us. This contribution builds the social and cultural fabric of our society, making a significant difference to the people of our state. The Citizen of the Year Awards program is proudly conducted by the Australia Day Council of South Australia in partnership with each of the 69 Councils across our state.
We encourage everyone to share a bit about their story, listen to the stories of others and celebrate with the people around you.
Because we’re all part of the story!
The Citizen of the Year Awards celebrate and recognise individuals and organisations that have made a noteworthy contribution during the current year, and/or given an outstanding service over a number of years, to a local community over and above normal employment duties. Outstanding contribution and community service includes areas such as; education, health, fund-raising, charitable and voluntary services, business, sport, arts, the environment, or any other area that contributes to the advancement and wellbeing of a community.
Categories
- Citizen of the Year Award
- Young Citizen of the Year Award
- Community Event of the Year Award
- Award for Active Citizenship
Eligibility Criteria
- Nominees must be Australian citizens (except for Award for Active Citizenship)
- Awards will not be granted posthumously
- Self nominations will not be accepted
- Nominees must be at least 16 years of age in the year of the award presentation
- Nominees for the category of Young Citizen of the Year must be 30 years of age or less on 26 January in the year of the award presentation
- Sitting state and federal politicians, current vice-regal officers and current elected members of council are not eligible
- Retired politicians, elected members and vice-regal officers will be considered for work undertaken in addition to their official duties
- Unsuccessful nominees may be re-nominated in subsequent years
- Groups of people, organisations or couples will not normally be eligible for Citizen of the Year and Young Citizen of the Year, though in exceptional cases the selection panels reserve the right to consider such nominations.
- Both individuals and organisations should be considered for the Community Event of the Year as this recognises the organising body or committee responsible for the event
- Absolutely NO weight is given to the number of times a person or organisation is nominated
- Previous recipients of the award categories may receive the award in the future however the work that this person or organisation made in receiving the original award may not be considered.
- Councils may choose to re-submit nominations that do not receive an award for future consideration in subsequent years of the program
Procedure
The Australia Day Council of South Australia and participating Local Councils call for nominations from community groups and individuals. Nominations are submitted online via this website or using the form provided by your local participating Council. To confirm if your council is participating, please go to the nominations page and select your Local Council from the drop-down menu.
All nominations received before the close-off date are provided to the relevant local Council for consideration and selection.
Awards are presented by local councils, usually as part of their Australia Day celebrations and all finalists will be notified by participating local councils directly.
Councils can forward the details of their Award recipients to the Australia Day Council of South Australia to go in the running for the State Awards, presented by the Governor of South Australia.
- South Australia’s Citizen of the Year Award
- South Australia’s Young Citizen of the Year Award
- South Australia’s Community Event of the Year Award
- South Australia’s Award for Active Citizenship
