Awards

To town council tonight where we had an interesting discussion about who we were going to give the community service awards to this year.
We have two of them:
The first is a straight forward award for a lifetime of achievement.
The second one is an award to a young person who shows promise.
Somewhat surprisingly the second is quite controversial and I have been wondering why.
I think the problem is that we are uncomfortable with measuring potential, reward is easy, and encouragement is much, much harder. How do we know that this young person’s potential will be realised? If we don’t give the award then they might not go on to fulfil their potential at all.
When it comes to regeneration there is a temptation to give funding to those who have a proven track record, who can prove they are capable. There needs to be space to give money to those who show potential, it is more risky but the rewards could be a lifetime of regeneration and some really interesting schemes.