Avis Leeson
Hamilton woman Avis Leeson loves children and she loves to garden; it has always been her favourite hobby.
For her fruitful efforts to introduce children throughout the Waikato to gardening, Avis has been nominated in the community spirit category of the Pride of New Zealand Awards.
Eight years ago Avis, now aged 85, had an unfortunate accident where she scratched her leg on a rusty nail which caused blood poisoning.
"After I had a life threatening attack from blood poisoning I felt I needed to do something to give back and make life a little easier for someone else."
While she was recovering she read in the news there were approximately 270,000 children living in starvation within New Zealand.
"I thought somebody needs to do something about it... [Lots] of research had been done and thousands of dollars had been spent on reports and from what I could see nothing was actively being done... I thought it should be," said Avis.
Avis said she is sure that education is the answer and she rang the principal of her old primary school in Morrinsville.
"I was, at that stage, a hospice volunteer but I thought that perhaps the needs of the children were more important than what I was doing. If I could do something to help to alleviate that situation, I'd give it a go."
The principal of Avis' old primary school welcomed her phone call, saying he had always wanted to have a school garden but he had never had anyone who actually wanted to help.
"From there it was so successful, I had 20 new entrants and not one of them had ever seen a seed and none of them knew that the vegetables grew in the ground and I thought for a country like ours and a rural community it didn't stack up.
"The children were so keen and loved pulling and eating the carrots they'd grown. Everything was just as I'd hoped it would be so I kept on going to all the other schools in town and the same thing happened."
Once Avis had assisted the Morrinsville schools she left her gardens in the hands of supportive teachers because she had the thought, "well, what I am going all the way to Morrinsville for? There must be schools in Hamilton that might like a hand".
Avis started going around Hamilton schools and has now finished up with 85 schools. She said she didn't start the gardens in all of those schools as some already had one and "they just needed a little help along the way".
Avis has now started organising the planting of fruit trees at different schools throughout Hamilton.
"I think it's really amazing because the children have fresh fruit in their own back yard. They are also now starting to have cooking classes where they are teaching the children how to use the fruit and vegetables that they've grown."
Everything Avis has done in these schools hasn't cost a thing; she sourced everything she needed from local garden centres that were more than willing to help the local schools.
Unfortunately Avis is not strong enough to continue her work within the school gardens but she keeps giving helpful advice with her segment on Waikato radio station Free FM 89.0 called Digging the Dirt with Avis Leeson, every Friday at 2pm.
"I have guest speakers, sometimes they are by telephone from all over the country and other times they are with local people who come into the studio.
"I have had children from the schools come in on a few occasions and I've interviewed them on the topic which is really good, I had Maggie Barry on air one day and all sorts of people involved in the food industry. It's just so good that people are willing to share their knowledge."
Nominations for the New Zealand Pride Awards closed on June 14. The regional award ceremonies will be held in August with the national award ceremony following in September. For more information see prideofnzawards.co.nz