Graeme Titcombe, President of the Rotary Club of Karori, has been made an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit (ONZM) in the Queen’s Birthday Honours for services to the home support sector and the community.Graeme had an extensive career in the electrical and electronic manufacturing and service industries in New Zealand and Australia before becoming CEO of Access Home Health, now Access Community Health. ACH is a provider of homer-based health and disability services owned by Rural Women New Zealand. Graeme was CEO from 1999 until 2015 during which time he led the consolidation of a range of rural support services into a national service and oversaw significant growth in those services in New Zealand. He was President of the New Zealand Home Health Association from 2001-2006.
Within the Karori community in Wellington Graeme was a charter member of the Rotary Club of Karori in 1982, he has been President twice, and is a PHF with sapphire. He has been Treasurer of the Rotary Karori Sanctuary Discovery Area, Chair of the Karori Community Bus since 2007, a founding Trustee of the Karori Community Hall Trust, and provides accounting services for the Marsden Day Care Trust.
(Information provided by David Watt)
Marie Baker, President of the Rotary Club of Whanganui Daybreak has been made an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit in this year's Queen's Birthday Honours for services to lifesaving and swimming. This honour comes on the back of more than five decades of service. She has held roles as an instructor, field officer, education officer, secretary, chief examiner and has travelled the country teaching the discipline to others over the course of her career. Marie has also spent more than a quarter of a century as a swimming teacher and has been a tutor for Swimming New Zealand since 1994. Her decades of service have earned her numerous awards including the Commonwealth Council Service Cross and the Kiwibank New Zealander of the Year Local Hero Award in 2016. She was made an Honorary Vice President of the Commonwealth Life Saving Society in 2014, and is the current president of Royal Life Saving Society New Zealand (RLSSNZ), a role she took on after heading up the Whanganui branch.
After the destruction of the RLSSNZ's national headquarters in the 2011 Christchurch earthquake she undertook the challenge of rebuilding the society, forming a new Board of experienced personnel in late 2011.
She has led RLSSNZ's partnerships with Swimming New Zealand, Surf Lifesaving New Zealand, and Water Safety New Zealand (WSNZ).
As the Society's delegate to WSNZ from 2012 she contributed to the development of WSNZ's integrated sector plan to reduce drowning nationally
.(Information provided by an article from the Whanganui Chronicle)