Meet Ballarat's 10 Dancing With Our Stars contestants for 2024

Earlier this year the Ballarat Foundation distributed more than $50,000 worth of Back to School vouchers - but chief executive Andrew Eales said they know that wasn't enough.

"We're seeing in the business community recently some of the real challenges and that flows on to workers and job availability," he said.

"All those factors unfortunately create a very vicious environment."

To help out, Dancing With Our Stars is set to return once again.

This will be the fifth Dancing With Our Stars gala event organised by the Ballarat Foundation.

Since starting in 2019 the fundraising initiative has raised $600,000 for the city.

Each year ten Ballarat personalities commit to raising $10,000 each for the foundation's programs.

These include the L2P drivers program helping teenagers build up their hours to gain their licence and the Dolly Parton Imagination Library which sends new books to children in the region.

At the same time, the stars will spend the next 12 weeks learning ballroom dancing from The Dance Studio owner Shelley Ross.

They will then take to the gala stage in June, some for the first time since high school formals or their wedding days.

Hundreds of volunteer hours will go into promoting the event and preparing these starts over the next two months.

Mr Eales said without these ten stars the Foundation "simply couldn't achieve the outcomes we have in recent years".

Each week The Courier will be talking to a different star and sharing how their dance training is going.