Sam Johnson

Sam is the founder and leader of the Canterbury Student Volunteer Army (SVA), Young New Zealander of the Year, and an elected member of the Riccarton/ Wigram Community Board in Christchurch, New Zealand. Immediately following the earthquake on September 4 2010, Sam and his team set up a Facebook page and organised an army of volunteers to begin cleaning up suburban Christchurch. Within a week, the SVA was thousands strong, and streets clogged with silt and liquefaction were cleared. The massive success of the SVA after that first earthquake was recognised both nationally and internationally, with Sam having meetings with NZ Prime Minister John Key and America's Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

After the more devastating earthquake on February 22, Sam once more reformed his team and rebooted the Facebook page. He opened the army to anyone who wished to help, growing its support base to over 20,000 within a week. People of all ages and backgrounds rallied to assist the recovery from as far as Dunedin where students packed thousands of lunches to feed the army, to Whangarei where primary schools held raffles and sausage sizzles to aid the effort. The need of a nation to help was brought together by one face.

Sam and his team were so highly regarded within emergency response circles that Civil Defence called on the SVA to be the first response for incoming calls for help. The Ministry of Social Development called on their resources to distribute much-needed information to neighbourhoods and make contact with people that, until the SVA arrived on the scene, had been isolated and overlooked.

Sam's ability to lead and direct has led to a comprehensive structure for emergency volunteer organisation. Through experience and experimentation, Sam and his team have devised the most efficient response in the shortest possible time to the most basic requirements of society immediately following a disaster. They have identified and developed the key roles that are essential to managing post-disaster recovery.

They have created a unique yet transferable template for getting mass volunteers interested and marshalling those volunteers into the most effective and efficient body of recovery ever seen in this country. His latest project, The Concert, was a massive live music event held on 3 November 2012 at the new AMI Stadium -- and the only way to get tickets was by volunteering in the community for a minimum of four hours. It's representative of Sam's most important achievement: making volunteering and social service something to aspire to, something young people want to be involved in.

Sam's ability to lead and direct has led to a comprehensive structure for emergency volunteer organisation. Through experience and experimentation, Sam and his team have devised the most efficient response in the shortest possible time to the most basic requirements of society immediately following a disaster. They have identified and developed the key roles that are essential to managing post-disaster recovery. They have created a unique yet transferable template for getting mass volunteers interested and marshalling those volunteers into the most effective and efficient body of recovery ever seen in this country. His latest project, The Concert, was a massive live music event held on 3 November 2012 at the new AMI Stadium -- and the only way to get tickets was by volunteering in the community for a minimum of four hours. It's representative of Sam's most important achievement: making volunteering and social service something to aspire to, something young people want to be involved in.