Nancy Kareroa-Yorke will continue to volunteer for Red Cross despite her full-time position.
Photo/John Stone
Nancy Kareroa-Yorke will continue to volunteer for Red Cross despite her full-time position.
Photo/John Stone
Red Cross— it's that one bug that Nancy Kareroa-Yorke will never be able to get rid of.
The affable Cook Islander who has been the face of Red Cross Northland for nearly a decade is bidding adieu to her full-time role but has signed up to be a volunteer.
Todayis her last day as the Northland community services manager— a job she took up not long after moving to Whangārei from the Cook Islands, where she worked as a Red Cross youth commissioner for Asia and Pacific.
She leaving to join husband Dan to help run their family business, Yorke Stone and Associates Chartered Accountants, in Whangārei.
Kareroa-Yorke caught the Red Cross bug in high school, back on the island where she got immense satisfaction doing community work, including visiting and helping people with disabilities.
"The thing that got me hooked into Red Cross was making people happy and when you're doing something good, you want to keep doing more and so this work grew from there."
Moving to New Zealand was a huge culture shock. But she chugged along and in less than a year was appointed to the current role after a brief stint as a volunteer for Red Cross.
She has juggled Red Cross work and that of her family business since last year but had to choose between the two.
"If I hadn't been in this dilemma, I'd still be working for the Red Cross. But I leave knowing that Red Cross is in a really good shape in that its activities and programmes are running well in supporting the community."
She will miss people she work with and help the most.
"When you catch the Red Cross bug, that bug doesn't leave you and I am like that," she said.
Kareroa-Yorke said with 24 years' experience in various roles as well as a background in emergency management, she would be ready when the Red Cross came calling her.
"I am sadder now that when I left the Cook Islands because Red Cross has been such a big part of my life and will continue to be. It made me a person I am today."
