Achievement and service honoured

The Dominion Post has been previewing this year’s finalists in the Wellingtonian of the Year Awards. In the second of a three-part series we look at the education, environment and government categories.

How do you recognise, often, a life-time of service and achievement that goes a long way to making Wellington different and better? You nominate them for the The Dominion Post sponsored Wellingtonian of the Year Awards, endearingly known as The Wellys.

Thirteen nominees across this week’s three categories have the chance to be held in as high esteem as some past winners, including Phillip Waddington, Peter Hughes and Liz Langham.

Waddington was an artist who painted portraits of early Ma¯ ori, but was honoured for his conservation work in 2013 when he won the environment category.

He designed a humane stoat trap and gifted it to the Department of Conservation. It is now used nationwide to enable the recovery of kiwi and other New Zealand birdlife. Another winner that year was Hughes, a man with a 30-year career in the New Zealand state sector.

Topping an accomplished list of government category nominees, he is regarded as the exemplary public servant, heading the Ministry of Education and then State Services Commission. Langham also held many voluntary roles and is a registered social worker.

Her contributions as co-president of TawaLinden Playcentre, working with the Wellington Playcentre Association, leading the Tawa Mainly Music group and supporting Mana Tiaki’s kapa haka roopu saw her take out the education category.

The trio were joined by Stu Barr, Dr Elizabeth Sneyd and Craig Utting, and Roger Moses in the same categories two years later.

If the calibre of past winners are anything to go by, expect this year’s standards to be just as high.

DK

is producer of TEDxWellington and founder of Creative Welly, an independent collective with the aim of making Wellington the most creative little capital in the world.

Sally Bain

is co-ordinating a predatortrapping campaign in the eastern bays aimed at saving the little blue penguin. Bird numbers are up, rats and stoats are down.

Annette King

signed off on more than 30 years in Parliament at the end of this term, 24 of them spent proudly representing the eastern and southern suburbs of Wellington.