Central Otago Reap manager Bernie Lepper was recognised with the Leader of the Year — Tangata Tiriti award at the ACE Aotearoa conference in Wellington.
The award recognises outstanding service in, and contribution to, the development and delivery of adult and community education and is a tribute to outstanding work in governance, policy development, training and administration.
Mrs Lepper has been the manager of Central Otago Rural Education Activities (Reap) since 1998 and helped establish Alexandra Community House in 2007.
While receiving the award was "really cool", she was quick to say it was for a team effort.
"It is a real honour for the [Central Otago] Reap team. Everyone is working together to make a difference for education in the community."
Anyone who had left school could access Reap training and continue all their lives, although the learning often changed direction as people aged.
It became less about moving forward towards employment and more about the sheer pleasure of learning newthings.
"Lifelong and life-wide education, adults never stop learning longitudinally and horizontally," she said.
Reap had 16-year-olds finding their way into employment, adults improving their literacy and retired people keeping mentally alert at U3A classes, she said.
Huge changes in government policy had changed adult education during Mrs Lepper’s decades of involvement.
"The only constant has been change. That’s why I stayed; the constant challenges."
Gone were the night classes in craft and the focus was on life skills — budgeting, learning skills to make money go further, literacy and numeracy classes and working with the Corrections Department to teach life skills to offenders.
Digital skills were in demand, with classes helping older people navigate their way through the world of online commerce, email and smart phones use.
Responding to needs in the community, sometimes for people who had not had good experiences with their earlier education, was the key to their success.
"[We offer] education for the harder-to-reach part of the community."
Mrs Lepper, who was awarded a Queen’s Service Medal last year, is retiring but is not about to put her feet up.
"I’ve been too busy working to think about it," she said.
Having just returned from a cycling trip around Albania, she planned many more adventures to fill her time.
