The One Spark That Created a Chain Reaction of Change: When a Peer Shows Up Authentically Through Change
Dave’s story echoes the power of shared experience — the kind that brings hope and inspiration. The hope that reached him didn’t come from professionals with the highest qualifications or from a system that promised transformation. It came from something far simpler and more profound — an unexpected encounter with a former cellmate who walked into his space radiating peace, recovery, and change. That moment became a spark of hope.
Dave Burnside never imagined he would one day become one of the most respected leaders in Aotearoa’s lived-experience mental health and addiction sector. His story began at sixteen, marked by drug use, homelessness, crime, and incarceration. The systems that were meant to reform and rehabilitate him instead processed, punished, and labelled. He was sent from youth courts to boys’ homes, from prison cells to mental health institutions such as the Oakley secure unit and Tokanui Hospital. In those years, heroin use was often mistaken for “madness,” and treatment meant confinement. His teenage years were spent moving through institutions, jails, and the streets of Auckland — sleeping in cars, changing rooms, and abandoned buildings.
Everything shifted in one brief encounter. While serving time in a prison drug-treatment unit, Dave heard a knock at his cell door. Standing there was someone he once knew — but this man was different. He radiated serenity and strength through the 12-Step programme of Narcotics Anonymous. For the first time, Dave saw something he wanted for himself. “I want what you’ve got,” he remembered thinking. That five-minute exchange became the turning point that changed the course of his life.
After finding recovery through the 12 Steps, Dave began walking a new path. In 2012, he helped launch peer support in the Auckland Drug Court, serving there for five and a half years. Later, he built Odyssey’s community peer team — a model that halved premature discharges and became known as “the glue” connecting services, admissions, and community.
His journey continued into consumer leadership, where he designed a feedback system later recognised by the Health and Disability Commissioner as an exemplar. Today, Dave sits on Odyssey’s executive team as the Lived Experience Lead — a voice for change at the highest level.
Over the years, Dave has trained more than six hundred people across Aotearoa through Peer Support 101, led workshops on stigma and role clarity, and lectured on recovery and social identity at AUT and the University of Auckland. He even teaches law students about empathy and connection — reminding them that true advocacy begins with understanding the human story behind each case.
In 2022, he co-designed a world-first academic pathway at AUT that enables lived-experience practitioners to enter tertiary education through Level 4 qualifications and progress to Level 7 without needing a traditional degree. This groundbreaking initiative opens pathways to research, supervision, and leadership for those whose expertise is drawn from life itself.
His influence now reaches beyond New Zealand. Dave serves on the Department of Corrections Pathways & Services Portfolio Board and leads the Aotearoa chapter of Global Freedom Scholars, part of the Incarceration Nations Network. His work on stigma and social connection has even been featured by the World Health Organization.
Currently, he is completing a PhD exploring the “peer moment” — that transformative spark when lived experience lights hope in another person. Through his research, Dave continues to challenge systems that risk tokenising lived experience, insisting that true reform begins by shifting individual trajectories.
From a fifteen-year-old heroin user facing the court system to an international voice for justice reform, Dave’s story is one of radical redemption. His message is simple yet powerful: change doesn’t begin with systems — it begins with people who dare to believe that hope is possible, and who choose to pass that spark on.
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