Recipients of Christchurch Civic Awards 2025

It all began one Sunday morning more than fifteen years ago in Latimer Square, a place, then as now, frequented by the homeless and the hungry. With only a cardboard sign and a box of hamburger buns, Daniel Chung began giving out free food to anyone who needed it. 

He paid for everything himself out of his earnings as a taxi driver from sheer compassion, with no expectation of recognition or reward. With the help of family and, later, other volunteers, the largesse continued every Sunday, every week. Eight hundred weeks and counting, and the giving continues.

Today, thanks to his humble leadership and consistent humanitarianism, this regular Sunday event is attended by up to a hundred needy folk. They receive hot meals, fresh fruit, drinks and essentials such as disposable plates and cutlery.

But Daniel’s initiative has done far more than simply provide food for the homeless. It has raised public awareness of homelessness, inspiring others to volunteer, to donate, and to engage with the issue more compassionately.

Perhaps more importantly still, he has created a safe and welcoming space that fosters a sense of community and connection amongst those in need during increasingly challenging times.

In 1990 a student radio broadcast on the importance of planting trees to help rebuild a weakened ecosystem sparked an idea. That idea gave birth to Trees for Canterbury.

In 1993 he was hired to manage the fledgling organisation, and over the next three decades and more he has nurtured TFC, making it grow and prosper from a small backyard community project into the flourishing and professional organisation that it is today.

Originally focused simply on growing and planting trees, he has cultivated TFC to become a major community service, not only growing a greater range of plants, but in the process also becoming a pathway for vulnerable, isolated or disabled people to learn new skills, to build self-confidence, and to make friends within a warm and inclusive environment.

He has a steady network of youth offenders working with him to gain the experience necessary to integrate back into the community. He has gone far above and beyond the call of duty required for his day job as nursery manager, making it his life’s mission to transform not only the state of the Port Hills, but also the lives of many of the less fortunate young people of Canterbury.

For more than twenty-five years, this volunteer-led organisation has delivered essential support services to new migrants, international students and former refugees, helping them to orientate themselves, and comfortably settle into what can be a very different, and for many, a very daunting new society.

It offers cultural support, language assistance, youth and senior engagement programmes, community events, and direct referrals to advocacy and social services. It fosters cultural pride, cross-cultural understanding, and meaningful connection within Canterbury’s increasingly diverse communities.

One of its most significant contributions was to offer its Riccarton premises as a free Covid-19 vaccination site, hosting clinics in a familiar and culturally safe space, encouraging the hesitant or those in hard-to-reach places to come forward. With close ties to local government, health providers, schools and other ethnic organisations, it empowers migrants to participate fully in civic life, build strong cross-cultural friendships, and to access the tools and services needed to navigate the cultural maze of their new home.

By strengthening community connections and promoting cultural diversity, the organisation’s events and programmes help people from different backgrounds to come together, learn from each other and build friendships, thus creating an ever more inclusive and welcoming city.

For a parent there can be no greater horror, no deeper wound, than the loss of a child. It is a tragedy that grips not only parents but grandparents, siblings, members of the wider family and circle of friends, and can leave a permanent and ineradicable scar.

Having lost her own first child she knew that she had to do more than wring her hands and weep. She had to channel her grief into something meaningful, something tangible. And so was born Maddy’s Memory, and the gifts that commemorate every little life lost, tokens for the bereaved to cling to for remembrance and for healing.

She set to work, carrying out extensive research, developing a clear vision of what she knew was needed, making contacts, all the while navigating the challenges of a chronic health condition and raising a young family.

Seven years on, and her free, compassionate services have provided scores of families with tangible keepsakes and emotional support during their most vulnerable moments, offering dignity, connection and healing when it is most needed, honouring each little life.

Maddy is not gone. She lives on in the memory and hearts of the many, many families that her mother has touched, leaving a legacy of compassion in the heart of Christchurch.

Since Christchurch’s declaration as New Zealand’s first Peace City in 2002, she has played a central role in preserving and promoting the city’s peace and anti-nuclear heritage. Without her dedication, much of this heritage would have been lost, diluted by time and forgotten, but her unswerving commitment has ensured that it not only lives on but continues to grow.

She was instrumental in the placing of a commemorative plaque in Victoria Square, a peace chair in the Botanic Gardens, interpretative panels at the Peace Bell, the Voices against War project, the Peace Stories database on the Disarmament and Security Centre website and many, many more projects and initiatives.

Together with her husband, Commander Robert Green, she donated their extensive peace and disarmament archive to the Macmillan Brown Library, providing permanent, safe access to a wealth of local and international materials. Equally important are the digital spaces that she has created, ensuring that Christchurch’s peace legacy is available online in perpetuity.

Her extensive work with young people has helped to equip the next generation with the knowledge, values and determination to continue this important work. Her efforts have created a legacy that not only safeguards Christchurch’s past but also informs and inspires ongoing conversations about peace, justice and civic responsibility.

A festival of the arts does not spring fully formed out of nowhere. It is the result of years of planning and hard graft. She and her team dedicated more than four years to making the FLARE 2025 event a reality.

Since 2021 she has invested countless hours in securing funding, finding venues, building support, forming relationships, and planning. Came the day and she was involved in all operational aspects, managing a massive programme involving sixty-five artists, a plethora of venues and over fifteen public events including workshops, talks and at fifty-five metres, Aotearoa’s tallest mural.

Flare 2025 brought significant creative social and economic benefits to Christchurch. It added beauty and colour to the city, offering moments of joy and inspiration to residents and visitors alike. On a purely practical level it provided paid opportunities for local artists to exhibit, and a high-profile platform for their work. It encouraged people to re-engage with the city, drawing foot traffic to the centre, creating shared experiences and promoting local businesses.

But FLARE 2025 is but one chapter in her on-going tale. She continues to serve Pasifika, youth, street art and Rainbow+ communities through her volunteer work. Her contribution reflects true civic spirit, grounded in community, culture and care.

Have you been having it tough for a while? Are things – emotional, social, financial – at a low ebb? It is a harsh world out there and people can be unkind. This group has an answer to that.

They will not try to define what ‘a tough time’ means, because everyone’s notion of ‘a tough time’ is different, because it is not based on any one thing; rather it is a very complex equation. The solution is kindness. They have heaps of kindness to share, or, more accurately, boxes of it.

Boxes containing delicious, fresh, home-baked treats. They are a group of women that take the time and their own money to bake things to give away simply to try and improve someone else’s day. Every Wednesday for more than ten years hospices, shelters, mental health services, social workers and more, receive a big box of goodies, a quiet but profound expression of compassion and care.

They have extended their reach into Christchurch Women’s Prison, via the Prison Bake programme, in which inmates learn baking skills alongside kindness, self-worth and the value of giving back. The volunteers also have the satisfaction of providing a meaningful and deeply appreciated way to contribute to their community.

For over thirty years she has worked assiduously for the community of Cass Bay and the neighbouring bays. She seems to be everywhere, volunteering for the Residents Association, the Reserves Committee, Whaka Ora Healthy Harbour, Conservation Volunteers Christchurch, the Court Theatre.

She set up community play groups when her own children were little and volunteered to do some dolphin spotting on the harbour, using the family boat, during the SAIL-GP event. She volunteered for the UNITY week in the city, and was involved in the Fifty-One Trees planting memorial at Pony Point in collaboration with the Muslim community of Christchurch in the wake of the Mosque massacre.

She has volunteered with the multicultural women’s volleyball and with Sow a Lyttel Seed. She is involved with the Head to Head Walkway working group to establish a pathway around the harbour from Godley Head to Adderley Head, and the Hallowe’en party that attracts community families and friends from all over the city.  

Perhaps her most significant efforts have been with the environment, with long involvement with the Conservation Volunteers, helping with conservation, tree plantings and pest trapping, She is truly the dynamo of Cass Bay.

She is a highly skilled co-ordinator and organiser who has been of service to the Pacific community in Christchurch for many years in many capacities, but at all times focused on the health and well-being of her people.

She is a tutor for the Methodist Mission, running life courses and coordinating nutrition and physical activity courses through the Appetite for Life programme for underserved communities. She volunteers for the NEED Trust Board, an organisation that provides services for Pacific communities to improve their social and economic futures.

She volunteers for Te Waipounamu Waka Ama Canoe Club at Lyttelton, holding many leadership roles on the committee, coaching participants of all stages and ages, and organising Waka Ama events both locally and regionally. She is a key co-ordinator for the Christchurch Polyfest and SPACPAC events.

She is the one who undertakes to see to the many unromantic, unsung but absolutely necessary duties without which no such event could ever happen: identifying and securing venues, organising funding, herding volunteers, liaising with school authorities, arranging for catering, setting up and packing down.

Her generosity with her time, her thoughtfulness, her energy, are legendary. It is said of her that she talks little and does much.

Incalculable is the time that he has given freely and generously over decades, always focusing on promoting the aims and objectives of the Christchurch Civic Trust for the long-term benefit of all citizens of Christchurch.

He continues to contribute without stint his wisdom, drawn from a deep well of academic study and expertise in the fields of transport and logistics, and his detailed knowledge of the intricacies of resource management matters, especially in relation to heritage and the environment.

His leadership, always positive, inclusive and collaborative, has enabled the Civic Trust to contribute constructively to a broad range of initiatives deeply relevant to the heritage of Christchurch. He has demonstrated exemplary leadership in advocating publicly for the development of comprehensive, integrated and environmentally friendly public transport systems that will interconnect the central city with the outer districts of Greater Christchurch.

He has worked long and hard for the protection of Hagley Park’s heritage and recreational values. He is deeply involved in the protection of other public assets such as parks and reserves from commercial exploitation, and pushes for planning provision for green spaces in conjunction with planned housing intensification.

His tireless dedication is an inspiration to all who have worked with him.

It is often suggested that the root cause of many social problems is acculturation, as people from one society attempt to integrate into another and different culture. Often this means that the traditions and values of the incomers are diluted by the values and methods of the host society, and the old ways that have served for generations are gradually eroded by the larger, dominant society.

The key to this is language, for language evolves to describe things that are unique to its speakers, and it is possible to convey meanings that cannot be said in any other tongue. But how to maintain the life of your language, especially when there are relatively few other speakers nearby, and those are often isolated? One very effective answer is radio.

She knows this. And she saw it twenty-five years ago. Her thrice-weekly broadcasts on Plains FM bring news in Samoan from Samoa to her audience of four thousand. Her interviews with the police, health providers, social agencies and many others keep Samoan speakers informed of matters that they may otherwise miss.

Most importantly, she speaks the words of their ancient and unique tongue, telling their stories as only they can tell them, keeping Samoan culture relevant, contemporary, and alive.

It would be easy to assume that her only interest is the New Brighton Community Gardens, where she has spent the past fifteen years working and sharing her many skills and encyclopaedic knowledge of organic gardening, but there is so much more.

She has transformed the Gardens from a patch where a few retirees can potter [and still do] into a thriving regeneration hub for many. Using gardening as a context she has successfully guided a diverse range of individuals onto and along a path for change.

The homeless, the long-term unemployed, immigrants, sickness beneficiaries, the disabled, all are welcomed to the Gardens and all benefit mightily from their visit.

She works with the clients of the Youth Court, the Corrections Department and the Police to provide a new and better direction, to show them that not only are they worthy but that they are both valuable and useful. And then there is the endless procession of community garden people from all over Greater Christchurch and beyond who came to admire the Gardens and whom she consistently supports with encouragement, advice, seeds, tools and even teacups!

She is the heart of the garden, hard-working, unassuming, always in the background but always supporting from the ground up.

Everyone seeking to make a new life in another land faces the eternal dilemma: how much of the new do I adopt, and how much of the old do I keep? Being a migrant himself, he understands only too well the needs of migrants.

Arriving in New Zealand in 2015, he immediately threw himself at this problem, volunteering for the Canterbury Nepalese Society first as an Executive Member, then as Secretary, then as Chairperson. He has become the go-to person for every Nepalese and Bhutanese seeking help and advice. His incredible leadership as President of the Society has created a profound sense of belonging for hundreds, be they permanent migrants or temporarily resident students, individuals or families.

He has devoted countless hours to planning, coordinating and delivering community initiatives, effectively mobilising resources, raising funds through community and cultural events to support both community projects and emergency relief efforts. The cultural events that he has organised have not only preserved traditional practices within the Nepalese community, but also welcomed participation from the wider public, fostering cross-cultural understanding and unity.

His fine balancing of integration and tradition has not only empowered the Nepalese and Bhutanese communities but has also contributed meaningfully to building a healthier, more connected and resilient Christchurch.

She has been a driving force behind several impactful environmental initiatives in Christchurch for decades. She has dedicated her life to helping to educate the community in general and young people in particular in the need to care for the environment, fostering participation, contribution and advocacy.

 She leads the annual Speaking 4 the Planet event which combines speech, art, drama and video competitions to enhance and amplify young voices on environmental issues. As Chairperson of the Christchurch Envirohub she guides and coordinates sustainability and environmental groups across Greater Christchurch.

She is Youth Engagement and Education Advisor at Environment Canterbury, working directly with young people to build environmental awareness and leadership skills. She coordinates the Canterbury branch of the New Zealand Association for Environmental Education.

Through her work and community service she has empowered people to participate in and contribute to a wide range of projects aimed at creating positive environmental change. Her service, her facilitation and her teaching have inspired thousands of people over many years, fostering a better environment for people and the planet.

She has inspired young people to stand up for what they believe in, instilled hope that their voices can make a difference, and the certainty that those voices shall be heard.

Over the years the fire brigades everywhere have evolved and changed, and the Brooklands Volunteer Fire Brigade is no different. It tackles fires, yes, in houses and factories, in fields and forests, but also floods, earthquakes, vehicle collisions, and any and every disaster that can strike a community.

In his fifty years of service, from messenger boy all the way up to Chief Fire Officer, he has seen it all. He has led the Brigade during countless emergency incidents, some of which have tested not only his operational skill but his personal resilience. He has also led the brigade through the challenges that it has faced as a result of the chaos that came in the wake of the earthquakes that saw many of its members, along with their families, their homes, their communities suffering untold upheaval and heartbreak.

But under his leadership the Brigade is not just something that responds to emergencies, it is about people, families and communities. His calm professionalism, his tact and his ability to lead by example, his humility, strength and sense of duty have kept the ship afloat and on an even keel.

He is the reason the Brigade, and the community of which it is an integral part is still standing, and standing strong.

The list of his fields of endeavour, and his wide-ranging involvements, is encyclopaedic. His achievements across an incredibly broad range of projects and organisations are nothing less than awe-inspiring.

The Christchurch Multicultural Council, the Christchurch Interfaith Society, Rotary International, the Christchurch City Council, the White Ribbon Campaign as well as several NGOs and Government departments are but a few of the many groups that owe him a resounding vote of thanks for his continued and devoted hands-on work, support, leadership and advice.

Always his impetus has been to serve to make a better New Zealand for all New Zealanders by supporting the social, cultural and economic well-being of every community, all the while celebrating their cultural and religious diversity. His tireless efforts over more than twenty-five years have strengthened the voice and visibility of ethnic and faith communities in civic life.

His leadership has helped to build trust, understanding and solidarity between groups, nowhere reflected more than in the immense outpouring of support, empathy and practical help expressed by New Zealanders of all persuasions towards the victims and their families in the aftermath of the Christchurch earthquakes and the infamous Mosque Massacre. Always his watchword is “Service Before Self.”

The cost of living increases inexorably, the public health system creaks, mental health problems abound, poverty grows, jobs get harder to find. These pressures affect all, but young people are especially hard hit. This is well known but it took the redoubtable Doctor Sue Bagshaw to do anything about it.

298 Youth Health began in 1995 but foundered in 2010. It was reborn in 2012, thanks largely to the generosity of the family of the much loved Doctor Husam Al-Ani. It offers a non-judgmental, safe and welcoming place for young people to get access to the help they need when they need it, without cost.

Over the years its remit has grown to include not only medical care but also counselling, youth work, mental health and employment support, a one-stop-shop of well-being services for young people aged ten to twenty-four. It is open to all, regardless of circumstance, but caters especially to those disengaged from school, facing challenges around mental health, housing and unemployment, and those involved with Corrections or Oranga Tamariki.

From its small, grass-roots beginning to its current status as a regional leader in youth well-being, it has continually invested time and resources to uplift the young people of Canterbury.

He is the backbone. A transformative leader, a visionary organiser and a humble servant whose work across a wide range of community platforms has shaped the social, civic and cultural wellbeing of Pacific peoples across not only Canterbury but throughout Aotearoa.

For over two decades he has helped to establish and lead cornerstone organisations that develop the voice and leadership of Pacific youth. The Pacific Youth and Leadership Trust, SPACPAC Canterbury Charitable Trust, Tangata Moana Trust, Matakau Niue Kalasiosi Incorporated, all have been enriched by his labours and his extraordinary energy.

He turns vision into structure, hope into strategy, and community need into sustainable action. He has been the support of numerous enterprises, not only initiating them but also carrying the weight of ongoing organisation as well as coordination, resourcing and delivery. He contributes financially and logistically, often absorbing incidental costs, supporting catering, or donating time-consuming administrative work that would otherwise be unaffordable.

His lived commitment reflects a leadership ethic based not on authority but on accountability, example and legacy. He is the backbone that has ensured that the core social infrastructure of Pasifika in Otautahi is protected so that the legacies of the elders are available for the current and future generations.

He has dedicated more than four decades to the betterment of the Christchurch community through tireless voluntary contributions. He was instrumental in the foundation of the Christchurch Guandong Association and has been continually involved in its ongoing community outreach and long-term development.

His involvement spans leadership roles, cultural celebration, historical preservation, new migrant support and cross-cultural understanding. He has personally led major fundraising initiatives such as that for the Westland-Ross and Kumara Chinese Gold Miners’ Gardens. He has organised earthquake relief events and many multicultural gatherings and festivals.

Over many years he has given countless hours of invaluable assistance to new migrants in crucial, practical matters such as school enrolment, housing, healthcare and access to government services. His vast experience of business and commerce, his wide network of contacts, and his multilingual abilities make him an eagerly sought and deeply appreciated mentor and well of cultural wisdom.

His initiatives have enhanced multiculturalism, preserved local Chinese history and created educational opportunities for younger generations to connect with their past. His selfless service and commitment to Christchurch’s multicultural future have earned him the deepest of respect not only of the local Chinese community but of the wider Christchurch community and beyond.