A WOMAN who devotes both her spare time and working hours to helping people saw her efforts recognised with two awards at the Dartmoor Multi Academy Trust’s Festival of Hope recently.

Greta Button, who works at the Okehampton Primary School as a parent support advisor, was awarded the Festival of Hope Community Award and the CEO Award for her work with Okehampton’s Ukrainian refugees and the town’s covid support group.

She said: ‘It was a bit of surprise – the school asked me to come to the event so I thought I might get an award but I wasn’t expecting two. There was that moment where they say “this award goes to someone” but they don’t actually say the name and I knew from the explanation that it was meant for me. My bag was positively jangling when I went home. It’s nice to be recognised.’

Greta has been particularly active in the Okehampton community having set up Okehampton’s Ukrainian support group which runs every Thursday and allows refugees and their hosts from across the area to meet up and share experiences.

She has also been instrumental in helping many refugee children settle into nearby schools.

‘I think a lot of it was to do with the Ukrainian families who arrived,’ she added. ‘When the Ukrainian children arrived at the school I was there saying “right, what are we doing?” It was not that I had done a lot myself, it was getting people together so that it might work.’

Greta’s community spirit also came to the fore during the covid crisis. She was a key member of the Okehampton Covid-19 Support Group which helped those clinically vulnerable people with shopping, prescription collections and other errands during lockdown. This was a time when people were struggling with loneliness as well as the practicalities of life and Greta was one of a small band of volunteers on the end of the phone every day.

Greta is extremely modest about her own efforts, saying she wanted to voice her admiration for her covid heroes – the members of school staff who continued to keep the schools open throughout the pandemic in order to care for the children of key workers, many of whom were working in hospitals.

She said: ‘During covid there were members of staff at the school early in the morning for the children of key workers and we were only able to keep the schools open because of that.’

This is the first year that the Dartmoor Multi Academy Trust (DMAT) have held the Festival of Hope, which aims to provide school at DMAT schools with high quality music education but the trust is planning on making it an annual event along with a ceremony to recognise all the hard work done by members of staff throughout the school year.

DMAT was created in January 2018 and runs 14 primary schools and three secondary schools across the Okehampton and Tavistock area.