When Alexis LewGor found out she was being awarded a King’s Birthday Honour, she couldn’t sleep for the whole weekend.
She was trying to think of what she did that could have stood out, because nothing over the past 30 years had been about the accolades.
LewGor was awarded a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for her services to ethnic communities, which started as her thirst for knowledge about herself in her new country and turned into three decades of volunteering and helping form organisations for ethnic communities.
The award highlights her “significant” contribution to multiculturalism in Rotorua, the Bay of Plenty region and nationally for more than 20 years with every hour being volunteer work for the greater good of migrant communities.
She was born in Fiji and moved to Murupara as a young mum with her partner in 1991, which she described as a “culture shock” and a time she had to “fend for myself”.
She got into volunteer work immediately and said that helped her gain an understanding of her new home while mixing with locals, despite having no family support.
“I thought I was in the only Fijian in the Bay of Plenty.”
The couple moved to Rotorua a few years later and she started cleaning to meet others and found many Islanders in laborious jobs which “didn’t paint a good picture for me”.
“Everything I observed was something that I felt - should I do something about it - as it reflected on me as someone from the Islands.”
She said it was a time when she experienced discrimination and racism, but action needed to be taken rather than sitting back and complaining, and she was lucky she was fluent in English.
In the 1990s, national health officials were travelling the country to connect with Pasifika communities and LewGor later spoke with a woman asking how she could help fix the national problems relating to Pasifika health.
From this conversation, LewGor ended up working towards a New Zealand Diploma in Business scholarship, which required a project to be put together by the end of the three years.
During that time, she went into Pasifika communities to see the need.
She then established the first Rotorua Pacific Islands Development Charitable Trust in the Bay of Plenty region in 1998, the first Pacific Island social and health services provider in the entire Bay of Plenty region.
She was the board secretary and is the current chairperson of the trust, which now has an early childhood centre and an office in town with 15 operational staff.
In 2000, she helped register the Rotorua Pacific Island Charitable Trust.
The year before establishing the trust, a Sri Lankan man she worked with rounded up a group of migrants, including her, to discuss an immigration issue for a local family.
From there, the Rotorua Ethnic Council was established, now known as the Rotorua Multicultural Council. She was president from 2007 to 2018.
The council won the Community Organisation Category of the Rotorua Westpac Business Excellence Awards in 2017.
She was on the board of the New Zealand Federation of Multicultural Councils (NZFMC) for 11 years, holding several roles including national president from 2014 to 2017.
“By being part of these organisations, you get the understanding of the issues and solutions.”
She said the mission was always to represent and support any groups and migrants.
She said the organisations were involved in policy discussions to make the transition for migrants easier with more support, including areas such as the formation of the NZ Translation Services.
She was the national president and chair of NZFMC’s Ethnic Women’s Council for three years and played a key role in assisting migrant women recently resettled in New Zealand.
This was established because of issues they were confronted with across the country relating to ethnic women.
For four years she was an event manager for GLOBALfest, a large-scale festival celebrating Rotorua’s cultural diversity through dance, music and performance and attracting 10,000 attendees annually.
She was chairwoman of the Rotorua Community Organisation Grants Scheme for two years and trustee of the Rotorua Christmas Parade Charitable Trust for several years.
LewGor is a trustee of the Rotorua Civic Arts Trust and a past president and current member of the Rotorua Fijian Association.
She was also a finalist in the Westpac Women of Influence Award in the Local and Regional category.
Her contributions have been celebrated with awards over the years: the National Merit Award for the New Zealand Federation of Multicultural Councils in 2010, the Rotorua Community Leadership Award in 2011, and the Rotorua District Community Award in 2012.
With decades of volunteering in multiculturalism, it was hard to pinpoint one memorable moment, but being a guest speaker at a Race Relations Day in 2014 as the president of NZFMC was up there.
She sat and spoke alongside those with the highest positions in the country, including the Governor-General and the Police Commissioner.
Her recognition today stemmed from her own experiences settling into New Zealand and trying to understand the new country she now calls home, which has made the process for new migrants easier.
“I love it - seeing the results and helping the community, that’s it.”