When the devastating Christchurch earthquakes struck in 2010 and 2011, hundreds of students from Lincoln University stepped up to lend a helping hand.
Sam Johnson was instrumental in establishing the Student Volunteer Army in the quake-ravaged city, which still operates today as a network of volunteers responding to crisis events.
Reflecting on that time in his life, Johnson told 1News the instruction to “stay at home and do nothing just seemed so counter intuitive to what was needed”.
“I really remember that emotion of that… going ‘well, this is the time we should be doing something, what should we do?'” he said.
Johnson said hundreds of volunteers were already prepped to work at a beach clean up event as part of a different university’s volunteer organisation when the earthquake struck.
“And then we just sort of swung into motion to partner with a couple of other organisations, worked with the council, worked with Civil Defence. And suddenly boom, 11,000 people and it was away,” he said.
Grateful residents watched on as hundreds of handy students arrived en masse and got straight to work.
“If it hadn’t been for them, I don’t know what I would have done, I just couldn’t cope with the mess,” one resident said at the time.
Another said: “It’s such a relief for the students to come round [because] I didn’t know where to start.”
Since that time Johnson was always leading from the front, and received global recognition for his work in founding the SVA and in turning it into a social movement focused on volunteerism and crisis response.
Over the past decade, student volunteers supported clean-up and recovery after eight national crisis events.
These included collecting and delivering groceries during the Covid-19 lockdowns in 2020, and operating major clean-up operations after the Auckland Anniversary weekend floods, closely followed by Cyclone Gabrielle, in 2023.
Johnson stepped down as Student Volunteer Army chief executive at the end of 2022, but had already notched up an impressive resume of teamwork and service.
He had previously hosted the Dalai Lama, danced with the Queen and spoken around the world about how to mobilise people.
“It’s a real privilege to help someone, and I think that’s what we’ve seen over 14 years of Student Volunteer Army.
“It’s the goodness that the volunteer gets from helping as well as the person receiving the help, it’s incredibly moving on any scale of project.”