Ben Receives Blake Leadership Award

By Benjamin Burrow | Posted: Thursday November 26, 2020

On Thursday 19 November, I attended the 2020 Blake Leadership Awards held at the Villa Maria Winery in Auckland.

The Blake Leadership Awards celebrates the leadership of 7 New Zealanders, and this year I awarded the Rangatahi Youth Award. The Blake Awards exemplifies Sir Peter Blake’s extraordinary Kiwi ‘can do’ spirit and leadership and I was honoured to receive this award.

The Blake Awards is a very formal occasion and was attended by many important people. This included the Governor-General Dame Patsy Reddy and the Rear Admiral of the NZ Navy. It was exciting to finally receive this award as there had been a long wait between learning about my award and then finally receiving it (6 months)!  It was quite difficult to maintain the secret until the award evening.

That night I shared the stage with many amazing individuals like Scotty Morrison, a leading activist for Te Reo Maori and Dame Anne Salmond, the Blake medalist who is one of New Zealand's leading Anthropologists and advocate of Te Reo Maori. It was quite surreal to be sharing the stage with such inspirational New Zealanders. It was a great opportunity to meet and chat with others who share the same passion of conservation and sustainability.

The next day, I was invited to do a live radio interview with Jesse Mulligan (from The Project) on Radio New Zealand which was an awesome experience as well!

It was awesome to be recognised for the work I’ve done around the school and in the community. I would also like to say a massive thank you to Ms Casey who nominated me for the award back in March.

For more information about why I won the award and what I do, feel free to check out the Blake Leaders alumni page which also includes a short video.

https://www.blakenz.org/person/benjamin-burrow/ 

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