Ron Sharp: Gentle social activist and environmental champion

May 26th, 2010
By David Armstrong

Ron Sharp winces a little when asked if he's "an activist". But strip out any aggressive or militant connotations of the word and use it in the sense of "a person who is actively working for a better society and social justice" and it fits very well on his shoulders.

Ron's adult life - he's now a spritely 74 - has been devoted largely to working with and for people who needed a hand up, while also trying to use and live on a minimum of environmental resources. He is currently chairman of the Motueka Community House committee and is often seen there supporting community groups that use the rooms there.

Raised in a Catholic family in Christchurch and, for a time, Auckland, he first began community work in South Auckland during the Muldoon years, when high unemployment gave rise to temporary work schemes such as PEPs (Project Employment Programmes).

His first set of 6-month programmes were carried out through work trusts, which included a range of projects including renovating an old school and dry rockwalling and other work in regional parks. From 1978 to 1981 he tried his hand at politics when he was elected to the Manukau City Council on a left-leaning Residents ticket.

He and three similarly minded political colleagues promoted "participatory democracy", and they were able to convince the council to accept the concept's principles. "It was great, getting people involved in decisions that affected them and their areas," he says.

But then he didn't stand again after the three years. "There were too many compromises, and I realised that politics was not my cup of tea. I'm too honest," he adds, laughing. "But what we tried to do was marvellous, and it would just go for today too. There was a great team of workers in the community development at the council."

In 1981 he moved to Hastings and got involved in a work scheme in the troubled Flaxmere area. "Whew! Tough stuff that was," he says. "But it was all these poor Maori young people who just didn't know where they belonged, really. Nobody wanted them, the school didn't want them, they didn't know who their parents were."

The trust he formed there tried to establish a community centre for Maori from two old houses they did up. It worked well for about 10 years but later it was run daown and then burned down. "That was a good learning curve for me."

In Hastings he met his wife, Edith, and had two children, Daniel and Nicole. Edith had always enjoyed the Nelson area, so in 1987 they moved to Riwaka, where they decided to start an organic garden on their 7000 square metre plot.

"We found that it had been a tobacco farm for 40 years and the soil had little depth and no quality," Ron says. So they made 10 huge compost bins and collected anything they could to break down and add to the soil. "But it was real hard yakka and when I reached 65 we decided to halve the amount and buy some compost in." They had two big tunnel houses so they used them to bring in enough cash to live off, along with seasonal orchard work.

Ron decided to use his experience with employment programmes to do community work through the Community House. "Renee Alleyne was using the room here to run the Motueka Employment Resource Centre, so I joined the committee for that. This later became the Tasman Employment and Enterprise Centre (TEEC). We used that and Labour Department funding to get lots of people into work."

He was involved in a project through TEEC that nearly got industrial hemp growing off the ground. "Through Motueka's work, we got it legalised for experimental hemp to be tried around the country."

After TEEC closed down in the mid-90s, so Ron started to get involved in various community projects, including the alternative currency called MOSS (recently relaunched as TALENTS). "For a while it boomed," he says. "We had two doctors, electricians, carpenters - all unemployed and keen to trade with no money involved. But then as employment grew it faded to a smaller number of traders."

Ron is an active and enthusiastic member of Transition Towns, which aims to move towards a lower energy lifestyle through the localisation of the local community, making it resilient and truly sustainable.

Ron's list of volunteer community activities seems to be growing in recent years. He takes some Parklands School children for reading, and has looked after four boys in the Motueka Mentoring programme, the latest one for four years now. He helps with a Parklands programme for dyslexic pupil, which runs on a computer program, and is occasionally a caregiver for Supporting Families in Mental Illness.

For a while he was chairman of the 50-plus walking group, and is currently chairman of the Community House. One important role for him is his work for the St Peter Chanel Church, mainly in the social justice area. He's on the Wellington Archdiocese Justice Peace and Development Commission, where he continues to advocate on social issues. That group has been active on areas ranging from penal reform and privatisation of water to protecting women on the DPB.

Clearly, retirement hasn't slowed him one iota. "You have to retire to something," he says. "It's no good retiring from only." So what drives him to be involved in so many activities that improve the lives of others?

"I have to say that it's still Jesus Christ. I mean, what a hero! He stood up for the people against all the authorities and got chopped down for it in three years. But what a powerful life!" He's not into all the traditional Christian dogma, "but it's the principles of what he stood for and the life he lived. That's been guiding me since the time I understood it."

And he's committed to green living. "I ride my bike as much as I can, and only bring the car into town if I have a big load to carry. We only have the one old car between us. We're committed to living as simply and basically as we can for our future generations. We want to grow our own food and know what we're eating."

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