A woman who is a powerhouse of positivity in her village has been awarded the British Empire Medal (BEM) for services to her community.

Donna Orphan was nominated by a group of around 15 parents and friends in St Germans for her award in this year’s Queen’s Honours.

The 46-year-old has been volunteering with children in and around the village for 30 years – and while some now have children of their own, many of the young people she’s supported have come back as volunteers in the youth club she founded eight years ago, the St Germans Youth Project.

Donna is a leader with the St Germans Rainbows, assistant leader with the Brownies, and helps out when she’s needed with the Liskeard Scouts.

From trips to the Harry Potter studios to overnight camps in the woods, Donna has done all sorts of activities with the youngsters in her care.

“I’ve been so lucky that the parents have trusted me with their children and they’ve had these experiences,” she said.

She’s not just involved with young people though: over the summer, while COVID restrictions meant the youth project couldn’t meet, Donna helped prepare and deliver meals for The Hive project at The Core.

Chatting to people is the most important bit about that kind of work, she says: she has also volunteered with the elderly in her local area, and is on the committee of the Eliot Hall.

Meanwhile, a popular village event is back on the calendar thanks to Donna. She is a key member of the team behind the resurrection of May Fair in St Germans – a role her friends and neighbours suggested her for because of her level head, and her organisational skills.

“Anything that goes on in the village, I seem to be part of it, not because I’m a busybody!” she says.

“But I just seem to be that person, I don’t like the word ‘no’.

“If it can’t be done, we’ll just find an alternative.”

Donna combines all her volunteering with her job as accounts manager for East Cornwall Trading and her role as a governor at St Germans Primary.

However, she very nearly didn’t receive her BEM, as she kept deleting the emails from the Cabinet Office, thinking that they must be scam attempts.

When a person she thought was a fraudster then rang her up saying they were from the Cabinet Office, Donna became quite irate.

“I’d just heard about an older woman who had been the victim of fraud and so I got quite angry. I put the phone down on them,” she laughs.

Thankfully the caller persisted, and it gradually sunk in for Donna that she truly had been nominated for an honour in the Queen’s Birthday list.

She says that she never considered what she did to be particularly special, but that reading all the things written for her nomination made her realise the true impact of her volunteering on people’s lives.

“I was embarrassed at first but by the Friday when I knew it was coming I was excited,” she said.

“The response from people locally has been fantastic, and my dad is thrilled. It is a funny feeling to get to this age and still be able to make people proud.”