Two women were given an Award of Excellence for their high personal and social achievements during a Hamilton Rotary Club luncheon.

Noelle Young was celebrated as the president-elect of the club, with her new position to start in July.

Tammy Warren was made an honorary Rotarian for her work as a senior marine resources officer for the Government’s Department of Environment and Natural Resources.

Ms Young said: “I speak on behalf of the young people of Bermuda that many of us are capable of great things, only because the older generations are now empowering us.”

Ms Young was nominated to the post in August, after several years of work with Rotary.

She said that Greg Soares, a former Rotary club president who nominated her, did so because he saw a “willingness to collaborate” within her.

She said that she wanted to make an effort to give young Bermudians a chance to demonstrate their usefulness to their country.

Ms Young explained: “I really don’t think that the youth of Bermuda are given an opportunity to show their competencies like we should be.

“In many cases, we aren’t made aware of all of the different opportunities that are available, not just nationally but internationally.

“So that is really one of my goals coming up into my year of presidency – to ensure that the youth of Bermuda are properly informed of all of the opportunities that await them.”

Ms Young has been an international youth delegate for several United Nations organisations and has recently been nominated by the UN Children and Youth Constituency to host Bermuda’s first local youth consultation.

The consultation will collect the concerns of young people and their policy recommendations into a “national youth statement”.

Ms Young was also chosen to attend the next Conference of the Parties convention on climate change.

The trip would be her second year at the conference, having formed a delegation of young people last year to attend as an “info-gathering trip”.

Ms Young said: “We did have a lot of support internationally last year, but we have more national support this year.”

Dr Warren’s career in environmental sciences began at the Bermuda Biological Station for Research, known since 2006 as the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences.

She joined the Bermuda Government in 1995 and worked in every aspect of the fisheries department over the decades.

Dr Warren became a senior marine resources officer in 2009 and helped to create a guide for the marine resources sector, which led to the creation of a “marine spatial plan” to protect Bermuda’s waters.

She is now a member of the Bermuda Ocean Prosperity Programme’s administrative team and is helping to create a “blue economy strategy” to make the most out of ocean-related businesses, while also protecting the environment.

Dr Warren has represented Bermuda’s marine interests in international groups and has led negotiations for the United Kingdom Overseas Territories Delegation for years.

She was appointed to the Sargasso Sea Commission in 2014, a post that she left last year, and has offered advice on sustainable fishing and the biology of coral reefs.

Dr Warren told Hamilton Rotary Club that it was important for Bermuda to do what it could to protect its marine environment.

She said: “Some of these things like climate change are out of our control – we need larger countries and industrial nations to step up and do what needs to be done to lower carbon emissions.

“But we still have to do what we can to make an effort to protect what we have as best as we can.”