As a boy growing up in England’s southwest, Snowy Lintern wanted to be a sailor. “I ran away to sea as soon as I could.”

He joined the Royal Navy in 1987 and stayed for 25 years, during which he served in Iraq and deployed to Afghanistan. He’s been an armed forces delegate with International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) since 2018 and is based in Tokyo, where he covers Asia-Pacific.

When a 7.3 magnitude earthquake struck Vanuatu on 17 December it left an estimated 80,000 people grappling with its devastating impact.

It has been a busy year for our international delegates working in the Pacific Islands. Since January, 15 New Zealand Red Cross specialists have headed to the region.

The landside, approximately the size of 18 football pitches, which swept through Enga province in the highlands of Papua New Guinea in late May, is no longer front-page news - but Red Cross have not forgotten the people affected by the disaster.

New Zealand Red Cross Emergency Response Unit’s IT and Telecommunications team has returned from Vanuatu after successfully restoring communications across the country for Vanuatu Red Cross in just two weeks.