Volunteers
Page 6
Moya Badham, QSM
"I've never thought of what I do as being a volunteer," says Moya Badham. "It's more a sense I have of joining in."
Moya was awarded the Queen's Service Medal in this New Year's Honours list for her public service work in the Waikato area. She was one of 189 New Zealanders to win an award.
Moya has been active in the DPA National Assembly for People with Disabilities, the Maori Women's Welfare League and the Order of St John, as well as the Foundation.
Articulate and talented, she believes that public awareness is the key to transforming the isolation experienced by many people with sight loss.
"I'm interested in making the public aware, not in charity. The fact that you can't see doesn't take away from being a person in your own right.
"Isolation is a big issue. I'm antagonistic towards those who leave people out. We've got to go more than halfway towards people who are isolated.
"Taking that first step is the hardest. It helps to have your hand held at that time, don't you think? I try to let people know that you can get help, and what's available."
Moya understands social isolation from her childhood experiences with glaucoma.
Three weeks after she was born, she was hospitalized for eye operations, and is still having operations as her vision fluctuates from being able to differentiate between light and dark and being totally blind.
As a child, Moya went to a mainstream school, where she often felt sidelined from activities and schoolmates.
Moya was then denied the opportunity to do a teaching diploma because of her degenerative eye condition.
Now aged 80, Moya immigrated to New Zealand in 1945 as a 21-year-old war bride of her naval husband.
She became a member of the Foundation in 1963, and in 1965 became a school librarian. This work fed a lifelong interest in the education of blind and partially sighted children.
Moya also lobbies local councils about environmental access issues and has no intention of letting age become another barrier to participation in life or from speaking up about what's important to her.
Moya's not one to rest on her laurels and will continue to advocate for people in the Waikato region as she has always done.