Kylee connects regional multicultural young people
Kylee is a member of the CMY Ballarat team. She currently works in two roles, one with the Ballarat team as a Community Connector and another with the ABC as their Takeover Youth Intern. Although these roles might seem different on the surface, Kylee’s experience with the two organisations is surprisingly similar.
Kylee is a big fan of video games. In her spare time, she’s been firing up her PlayStation 3 to play some retro favourites. She also wants to get more into reading with the recent film Project Hail Mary (2026) being a big inspiration.
Kylee was studying a Diploma of Community Services when she discovered CMY through her TAFE course’s placement website. Among all the other organisations that came up, CMY stuck out to her as the only one in Ballarat that caters to both young people and multicultural people.
“I saw the name and I was like, ‘wait, this is something that sounds really like what I want to do,’” Kylee says.
“I didn’t know there were any organisations, at least in Ballarat, that were, well, young people and multicultural people… I just assumed that there was nothing.”
Initially, Kylee joined the Ballarat team as a placement student. Kylee then took on the role as Community Connector to support Respect Ballarat, helping multicultural communities in Ballarat have their voice heard, on top of another casual role facilitating gender-based violence program Speak Up! workshops. These roles evolved to include running CMY Ballarat’s Instagram account, an idea that was originally her own.
“I was watching how the team was promoting these cool events that they do, but it was just through flyers and emails,” says Kylee.
“It just felt a bit disconnected from how you would normally target young people.”
In late 2025, Kylee was offered the position as the ABC Takeover Youth Intern. In this role, Kylee helps multicultural young people in Ballarat tell their own story for the ABC Takeover competition. Takeover is a region-based platform for high school students who want their stories to be heard nationwide. Kylee says that assisting with the competition is eye-opening.
“Takeover is such a good opportunity for any young person to have their story heard,” Kylee says.
“I’ve learned so much about what’s going on in Ballarat. Even though I live here, there was so much I didn’t know about. I actually didn’t know there was a Ballarat Ninja Warriors set-up until we were recording a story there.”
With the winners recently announced for ABC Takeover nationally, one winner stands out. Bonnie, a member of CMY Ballarat’s Youth Advisory Group (YAG), was one of the winners. We reached out to Bonnie to hear her thoughts on becoming a winner.
“It was an amazing feeling to be a winner and to have my voice heard by so many people, and I’m so grateful for all of the opportunities it gave me and the friends I made,” Bonnie says.
Once the Takeover winners are announced, there are a lot of events to promote the young people’s stories including a red-carpet premiere of all the stories, which Kylee and the CMY team attended, and a summit. Although this work is stressful, it doesn’t take away from Kylee’s other work with CMY, in fact it strengthens it.
“I feel like my two jobs are very similar,” Kylee says.
“My job as a Community Connector is being the bridge for multicultural communities that usually don’t get heard. And then my job with the ABC is being the bridge to young people that usually don’t get their voice heard to be on national TV.”
Unexpectedly, taking on this role has changed Kylee’s whole career aspirations. Engaging with young people in this way and catalysing their storytelling journeys has made Kylee realise that this sort of work is where she wants to end up.
“I feel like starting the internship, it’s opened a whole new world to me,” says Kylee.
“I really love working with the team and there’s so much interesting production that goes on behind the scenes that’s in line with what l’m interested in.”