By Jessica Micallef
The Sunbury Blue Light Disco committee is dancing for joy.
The disco was awarded the Community Event of the Year Award at Hume council’s Australia Day award ceremony on Tuesday.
Disco president Kylie Lowdell said she was thrilled with the event’s achievement.
“We run on volunteers and the year that 2020 was, I think we are lucky to have won it,” she said.
“It has given us such a good boost and everyone is really excited.
“It gets our name back out there and it’s great to know we haven’t been forgotten.”
The disco has become a fan-favourite event in Sunbury, running for more than 40 years and often hosting 350 students each disco.
But 2020 was the year committee members had to put a pause to the disco, as the COVID-19 pandemic forced many events into the dark.
“We had one disco in 2020 and it was in February,” Ms Lowdell said.
“We still had a couple of meetings so we didn’t lose our volunteers because when you lose volunteers, it’s hard to get them back.
“It was hard but we were lucky. We were able to help out out local CareWorks and hand out meals to our police and ambulance members to say ‘thank you'”.
Ms Lowdell is hoping to hold a disco once a term in 2021. She said the discos were a great opportunity for children to interact with their local police officers and learn life skills.
“We always have a minimum of two uniformed police officers and one or two plain-clothed officers,” she said.
“Some kids are scared of the police so it’s good to have that interaction. They get to have fun with the police officers.
“We also have quite a few juniors from years 7 and 9 and they work in the canteen, give out drinks and are on stage so it’s a really good role for them to learn skills. We can give them a reference when they apply for jobs.”
Ms Lowdell said the disco wouldn’t be possible without the dedicated work of committee members and volunteers assisting on disco nights.
“On a normal disco night we can have up to 40 volunteers,” she said.
“A lot of our volunteers used to attend the disco when they were little.
“We are really looking forward to getting out there again.”
