For university student Brianna Troy, the path to giving back isn’t a straight line. It involves a journey that may well last a lifetime, with bobs and weaves along the way. Take her volunteer work, for which she received the 2025 Margaret and Robin MacLennan Youth Volunteer of the Year Award. As part of her schoolwork for the health information fundamentals program at McMaster University, she and her classmates needed to log volunteer hours in the community. She chose Positive Living Niagara and worked more than 200 hours on various projects with them, including the distribution of harm-reduction kits and spreading HIV/AIDS awareness education to some of the region’s marginalized persons. She chose this work, she says, because it was meaningful and impactful. Much of Troy’s time involved travelling around the Niagara region in a van — from 5:45 p.m. to 11 p.m. — to distribute supplies and medicine to those in need. “Meeting people where they are,” she says, and providing non-judgmental support — though “mentally taxing” — was ultimately so rewarding that it influenced her desire to pursue a career in public health. “People think HIV/AIDS is a thing of the past,” she says, “but it’s very much a prevalent issue.” Positive Living Niagara estimates the condition affects some 400 people in the Niagara region. Armed with an undergraduate degree in critical criminology from Brock University, she will be ready to get to work this fall after completing her diploma from McMaster University. Troy’s a lifelong learner — “I see school as one of my hobbies” — but she is eager to get out into the world, make a difference and discover where she’ll go next.