A strong community focus and a passion for helping people has led to Reginald "Reg" Pierce being awarded a prestigious honour.
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He has been made an officer of the Order of Australia (OAM) for service to the communities of Wauchope and the Mid North Coast.
Mr Pierce has worked tirelessly with the Rotary Club of Wauchope since the 1970s.
He said his passion for helping people comes from his humble beginnings.
Mr Pierce was born in India and said he "grew up in the Mumbai slums" in the 1940s.
"My father, sister and I immigrated to Australia in 1947," he said.
"I then grew up in Sydney, went to school there and went to boarding school before working with my father."
Mr Pierce moved to the Mid North Coast in 1974 after he separated from his first wife. He worked as a panel beater before meeting his second wife, Meg.
It was a customer of his panel beating business who asked him to join Rotary.
"I've always been drawn towards helping people and Rotary was a good fit."
Mr Pierce said it was the humanitarian work he was able to undertake with Rotary that contributed to him staying with the organisation for so long.
"You see suffering and neglect or pain and you can't do anything about it because you don't have the resources, but when you join an organisation like Rotary, it's powerful, it's well structured and you have access to grants and fundraising abilities," he said.
Mr Pierce was the chair of the Rotary Donations in Kind Committee (2002 - 2016) and the chair of the Adopt a School Program (2003 - 2012).
"I got a program up and running between Vanuatu and Australia called Adopt a School where we swapped items such as books, clothes, sporting equipment for kids that were underprivileged," he said.
"[The kids] had nothing, not even a chair to sit on.
"I took over Donations in Kind Program... we accepted donations of clothes, computers and books for those in need."
One humanitarian effort Mr Pierce remembers undertaking is delivering over 30 pallets of wheelchairs to children in Cambodia and Vietnam injured by landmine explosions.
"I also remember delivering a pallet of books to Bhutan, a totally landlocked country."
Mr Pierce was also the director and program manager of Rotary's Drought Relief Program from 2017 to 2020 which saw him in charge of raising $1.5 million. The money was used to deliver clean water and stock feed to farmers in need.
"With the power and the structure of Rotary, I could get a lot done," he said.
Mr Pierce is also a member of the Wauchope RSL Sub-branch and was involved in the Victory in the Pacific and Remembrance Day Project.
He said helping people remains a passion of his.
"It's very easy to have empathy for someone when you've been down their street, when you have lived in their shoes. I know what it's like," Mr Pierce said.
"You're not giving them a handout, but giving them a hand up."
When asked about receiving the honour of an OAM, Mr Pierce said it's "humbling".
"There's no other words in the English language to describe it," he said. "To get this award for doing something that you love is so rewarding."
