KEY POINTS:
Just how do you reward the selfless members of our society who refuse to profit from their unsung heroics?
We're not sure if there is any reward big enough, but the New Zealand Herald and P&O Cruises are sending six of them to sea.
The winners of our Unsung Heroes series, which has run for five weeks over June and July, were awarded their Pacific cruise prizes on Saturday.
At a function in Auckland's waterfront Hilton hotel, the winners - four individuals and one couple - were named and presented with their winning certificates by Ann Sherry, chief executive of Carnival Australia which operates P&O Cruises in Australia and New Zealand.
Choosing the five winners was made difficult by the outstanding calibre of the 41 people from around the country featured in the five-week series, she said.
The winners range from volunteer environmental restorers to a volunteer immigrant support worker, and Ms Sherry told the winners they exemplified the best of New Zealand society.
"I think most people know that our community only functions because of people like you.
"It's really what makes our community strong, the work that you people do. So this is just a small way of saying thank you."
Herald assistant editor John Roughan said the volunteers' stories had allowed the newspaper to showcase some of the most positive aspects of New Zealand, showing newspapers were not just interested in people's misfortune.
"And the Herald has enjoyed publishing the great, positive things people are quietly doing for their communities."
The winners are:
Thanga Mahasivam is the founder and ongoing organiser of the New Zealand Tamil Senior Citizens' Society.
She saw a need for Auckland's elderly Sri Lankan immigrants to have a social organisation to decrease the isolation they often suffered in Auckland. Coming from a family village-based society in Sri Lanka, the immigrants struggled with the far more independent society in New Zealand.
A retired teacher, Mrs Mahasivam manages the group, organises activities and acts as its taxi driver.
George and Veronica Nathan-Patuawa have been the constant force behind their seaside settlement's ecological renewal over the last decade.
Omamari Beach, north of Dargaville, had polluted streams, eroded dunes, little dune vegetation and no community vegetable garden.
Driven by a desire to honour their environment and provide a better environment for shellfish, the couple have given chunks of their time and their own pensions reversing each of those issues.
The couple also provide free vegetables for their fellow villagers and organise lawn-mowing for those unable to do it themselves.
Tu Romia, Richmond Road School's caretaker for some 30 years, has never seen his role as a job. Instead, he treats it as a lifestyle, one he pours time, good nature and generosity into, to the delight and appreciation of the school and its pupils.
He is the coach of several school sports teams, the school guitarist, and even its Cook Islands language tutor - using his own mastery of the language to keep it alive in the school's Cook Island pupils. He then spends his weekends supervising periodic detention workers.
The cruise will be his and his wife's first holiday together in more than 30 years of marriage.
Diane Vivian, founder and chairwoman of the Grandparents Raising Grandchildren Trust, has scored huge victories for many of New Zealand's caregiving grandparents.
The trust looks after those grandparents who are left to raise their grandchildren after their own children's death, illnesses, or neglect of their children. These grandparents had no support, little recognition and unequal financial support compared with other caregivers.
Mrs Vivian saw those realities first hand, and stepped in to change them, getting a massive response to a newspaper advert for fellow grandparent caregivers.
She continues to run the trust and to campaign for better support for the country's second-time parents.
Jim Savage has felt a need to volunteer for 40 years. The paraplegic, in a wheelchair since polio struck when he was 22, saw the generous side of his community when they helped him get to the Paralympics in 1968.
Since then, he has felt bound to acknowledge and thank the community, by organising fundraising drives, coaching sports teams, collecting and sending equipment for disabled people to Peru, and manning several community-focused committees.
He also set up the Eve Rimmer Games, aimed at encouraging people with disabilities to get involved in sport.
