00:00 I'm Elizabeth Macdonald, I'm the leadership program department officer for Highline Highland.
00:04 And tonight at the IQ Awards I won the integrity and accountability award and the employee of the year for Highline Highland, making life better.
00:13 Congratulations, and you were shortlisted for a couple of other categories as well, did you expect any of it?
00:18 No, I was shocked, I was shocked with my life. I was shortlisted for another two, so that was the reason, yeah.
00:24 And how do you feel about the nominations and everything else?
00:29 Really surprised and really touched by the people who nominated me, because it's not necessarily the people that I work closest with, but the people I do work with.
00:37 So it's really, and particularly my line manager who for the last two years has put me forward into the e-telly, so it was a huge surprise.
00:47 And what is it you actually do and how long have you been doing it?
00:50 So I developed the leadership program for young people across Highland for 12 to 25 years, and I've been doing it in that post, the post I'm in now for about 8 years, but before that I was at schools in there and I developed a program in there before it was rolled out across the whole of Highland.
01:08 And have you found that it's sort of making a difference to young people's lives, the sort of work that you're doing, and to your colleagues as well?
01:15 Yeah, for sure, yeah. Since the beginning of the program there's been about 6,500 young people signed up for the program, and there's young people signing up every day, and we've got all the engines daily, which does make their lives better, and it changes lives.
01:28 Young people get the opportunity to volunteer in an area that they choose to volunteer in, and then they get recognition through the leadership program, they can take on their CVs and everything.
01:39 The important thing to the young people is the hoodie, it's all about the hoodie, they'll tell you that.
01:45 What's the hoodie mean then, is that at the very end?
01:48 So they get, there's six different coloured hoodies that the young people work through, and each one has a different, means something different, but they all know what it means.
01:55 There's hours attached to them, but there's also training attached to them. There's a silver hoodie, and there's also a gold hoodie. So yeah, it's very important to the young people, that's the motivator.
02:06 Excellent, and was that your idea?
02:08 Yeah.
02:10 Really? Well, thank you very much for your time.
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