However jaundiced you may be about the news from around the world, the reminder that good people work hard and often in the background lifts the spirits.

And this year is no exception. Three of the recipients in the ACT are unsung heroes who deserve to have choirs raising their voices in praise.

The fourth - the winner of the main award - is famous but his selfless work away from the basketball court is quiet and effective.

Take the ACT Local Hero, Luke Ferguson, who works at Woden School for students with disabilities.

He is not someone who goes into work, does his time and then leaves.

He sets up imaginative projects which engage the students. Confidence - self-confidence - rises.

As the organisers of the award put it, he "empowers young people with disability to increase their independence, achieve their goals and engage with the wider community".

Or take the ACT Young Australian of the Year, Sean Dondas, who started helping young people cope with cancer in the family when his own mother died of the illness, leaving him and his two younger brothers as wards of the state.

The four recipients of the award share one thing in common: they see the world beyond themselves and want to help improve it. They are selfless in the service of others.

They come good when times are bad.

Canberra has not had the easiest years in its history. There were the bushfires and then the pandemic.

Fifty years after volunteering for the St John Ambulance in primary school, the ACT Senior Australian of the Year, Valmai Dempsey, is still helping.

In the bushfires, she led 40 fellow volunteers supporting stricken communities. In the pandemic, she contacted every volunteer to check how they were bearing up.

As the organisers of the awards put it: "It is these tireless commitments to St John that has led many in the community to know her lovingly as 'Aunty Val'."

Unlike these three recipients, the fourth is very well-known, not just in Canberra where he is from but to every basketball fan in the United States. But that's what makes Patty Mills' off-court work so special.

Some sports stars let the publicity and the money go their heads. He lets it go to good causes through organisations which he sets up.

He is a star, playing basketball at the highest level in the NBA, but he hasn't forgotten his roots as an Indigenous person in Canberra.

He created Indigenous Basketball Australia to encourage Indigenous people and Torres Strait Islanders to get into the sport.

Last year, IBA donated $1.5 million to organisations tackling racial inequality.

He also founded the Team Mills Foundation which is a not-for-profit organisation "supporting and championing culture, diversity, women and underprivileged families and enacting positive change for the environment worldwide".

The four recipients in their different ways are pillars of our community.

They make us all stronger.

They choose not to pass on the other side of the street.

We rejoice in the awards they have just won.

And we shall be rooting for them in the national awards on January 25.

Our journalists work hard to provide local, up-to-date news to the community. This is how you can continue to access our trusted content: