EPPING FOREST: Residents listed in New Year Honours
3:20pm Tuesday 3rd January 2012 in Epping Forest News
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A POLITICAL expert who has helped rebuild democracy in Afghanistan and an animal anatomist are among those in the district mentioned in the New Year Honours list.
Gavin Davis, 31, of Brook Parade, Chigwell, was appointed an OBE for his work helping to re-establish local government and infrastructure including schools and clinics in the Helmand province of
the war-torn country.
“It’s the best job I’ve ever had,” he said. “I worked with the district governor, working out how to establish services for people.
“We got 12 or 13 of the 20 or so schools in the area opened and opened up one or two clinics.
“It’s difficult to have a concept of what it was like coming from the UK.
“The military had secured an area that was totally dominated by insurgents, which meant there was no presence for the local Afghan government.
“They hadn’t had anything like that in place for a very long time.”
The Tottenham Hotspur FC fan, who has lived in Chigwell since he was a toddler, has a degree in electronic engineering, but said he decided to follow his life-long interest in politics and work for
the Government after graduating and worked in Afghanistan from October 2009 to December 2010.
Andrew Crook, 49, of St Leonards Road, Nazeing, who works at the Royal Veterinary College in Camden, was appointed an MBE for services to veterinary science.
“It’s exciting,” he said. “My colleagues are telling everyone and my friends and family are very excited.
“I do a lot of work encouraging young people from diverse backgrounds to think about veterinary medicine as a career.
“We’re often seen as a place where only the rich people go and that’s not true anymore.
“We have local schools, often from poorer areas, in and do a lot of live animal work – looking at horses, cows and dogs, and quite often the children have never seen a live cow up-close.”
He said he was the first person in his own family to go into his line of work.
“My mother was a social worker and my father was a policeman, but I’ve always been interested in animals,” he said. “I have a 14-year-old daughter, who was interested in it for a while, but my
son’s a bit young to decide.”
Jim Foster, 60, of Spareleaze Hill, Loughton, was appointed OBE for services to the financial services industry for his work with City Group in Northern Ireland.
Peter Martin, the leader of Essex County Council, was appointed MBE for services to local government.
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