SURPRISING
s e p o h HIGH
Zara performing at Sunshine Sounds
Noosa Chances has sponsored the aspirations of local high school students since November 2019. Georgia Beard explores how the charity’s Australia-wide evolution allows students to reach new heights.
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cross the Sunshine Coast, a generation of young people are quietly achieving their potential thanks to a dedicated group of locals and the businesses that support them. Emerging local musician Zara is already chasing her dreams. This July, she performed solo and alongside Eumundi School of Rock at the Sunshine Sounds Festival, where the likes of Katie Noonan, Clare Bowditch and Andrea Kirwin rocked the stage. After being invited to perform at one of our magazine launch parties to promote Noosa Chances, Zara’s rich vocals and piano playing entranced all and grabbed the attention of Katrina Thorpe, owner of ikatan Spa, who saw beyond the performance to Zara’s potential. Katrina reached out to Noosa Chances, the local charity investing in the aspirations of young people who lack the resources to achieve them. CEO Tara Bell connected her with Zara, and this partnership sent the young musician’s career soaring. Initially, the charity relied on donations and fundraising events like the Noosa Cup Race Day to support high school students but this year, Tara and her team shifted their approach, inviting Hello Sunshine Magazine
local businesses to sponsor the students with a scholarship for the duration of their education. Tourism Noosa, Travis Schultz & Partners, Century 21 Australia, Chef Matt Golinski and Noosa Mayor Clare Stewart are just a handful of many locals fostering the future of our youth. We’re proud to say that we offer two student scholarships - one from Hello Sunshine Magazine and another from IN Noosa Magazine. This new direction for Noosa Chances signals a greater transformation on the horizon. Expanding from the Noosa Shire to the Sunshine Coast and beyond, the charity will soon be known as Altitude Scholarships. After refining their Noosa-based business model on a small scale, Tara and her team are eager to take their scholarships Australia-wide with an external team from BDO Australia ensuring the effective management of the scholarship program as it grows. She said the expansion responds to interstate friends and colleagues, who have asked to sponsor students from Melbourne, Sydney and even New Zealand since the charity began. Altitude Scholarships matches high14
performing students with businesses, who sponsor their development through high school and university. Annual scholarships of $1500 are tax deductible and subject to annual reviews, giving students the option of a gap year with suspended payments. Businesses can approach Altitude in search of a student and Tara and her team partner with Board Advisor Andrew Pierpoint, head of the Australian Secondary Principals’ Association, to discover students nominated by school principals who show great potential and need a hand up, not a hand out. “We like the fact that it’s not us selecting the students; it’s the principals who are best placed to know who is most worthy of these scholarships,” she said. Students can only spend their scholarship funds on essential items relating to their education or special skill - school uniforms, textbooks, laptops, musical instruments, extracurricular lessons, desks – the list goes on! Soon, Altitude will equip students with specialised debit cards for spending to make it easier for them to access what they need, when they need it. While financial support is the first step in the scholarship, it’s not the only one.