Community Contribution Award

Karen Loftus has worked at Berrynarbor Village Shop for nearly nine years – her energy and enthusiasm leaves most of us breathless and we feel so lucky to have her here.

Karen’s commitment as Shop Manager to the shop, its volunteers and customers is abundantly evident, none more so than over the last year.

We knew how important the shop was to our community – we have an above average percentage of elderly and frail residents – many of whom rely on the shop for their essential groceries. As COVID struck we immediately decided on a course of action with the prime objectives of keeping our staff, customers and villagers safe while ensuring that we were still able to provide the vital service to those who have always depended on us.

Led by Karen, a small team of three, initiated measures in accordance to the Government guidelines – including restricting the opening hours; limiting the number of customers in the shop at any one time, social distancing, a one-way system and masking wearing, in order to protect those using the facility. A majority of our wonderful volunteers were considered in the high-risk category so were no longer able to support the shop, adding huge pressure onto the remaining team of three but Karen took it in her stride.

With a large number of people in the community shielding at home, Karen initiated a network of telephone volunteers who coordinated telephone orders and deliveries via a safe space above the shop. Using the power of social media, emails and telephone calls we informed our villagers, account holders and other customers (people come from quite a long way to use our fabulous shop) that if they were vulnerable or self-isolating they could phone through an order in the morning and we would make it up for them in the afternoon – either delivering it to them or they could come to collect at a given time slot. Karen recognised that some prefer to do their own browsing and so they were offered shopping appointments in the afternoon when they could have the shop to themselves. This proved invaluable to so many within the community.

To ensure our shop didn’t become a victim of empty shelves, Karen worked tirelessly to scour new local suppliers in the area to keep stocks at healthy levels, meaning our customers never went without. Now, thanks to Karen we are proud that a third of our food produce is from local sources within 30 miles of our beautiful village, thereby reducing our global footprint.

Karen had already contributed so much to the community shop during the initial months of the pandemic, going above and beyond to support those who needed the Village Shop the most, but thanks to one extraordinary commitment, Karen’s amazing efforts actually saved it from having to close when the shop was plagued by a number of power outages. Each time this required manual intervention to restart the power supply – not too much of a problem when the store was open, but when it happened during the shops closing hours, we were at risk of losing the huge and expensive amount of stock we had in the freezers.

After an electrician was unable to offer an explanation and therefore a solution, Karen decided to upload a link to the shop’s CCTV so that she could monitor the situation from home on her laptop and phone. Whenever the power supply failed she was alerted and would come down to the shop, even in the middle of the night and sometimes in the most awful weather, to reset the switches. She really did save the shop’s viability through her actions.

To underpin Karen’s commitment to Berrynarbor, we share the story of one of Berrynarbor’s most celebrated characters, Bill.

Bill is born and bred in the village and owned and worked a local farm until he retired about 20 years ago. He’s now in his late 80s. Those who know North Devon will appreciate how hilly it is and Bill’s house is no exception; up a very steep hill from the shop, up an even steeper drive and then 16 almost vertical steps to his front door. Bill has been fiercely independent, never married, and made a daily trip to the shop to buy all his grocery needs. He is dearly loved by all connected to the shop and we were saddened when he told us that he was having to stop three or four times on the way home to catch his breath. He was becoming increasingly unwell, had numerous hospital appointments and this eventually led to him not being able to come down to see us.

Step forward our Karen. She knew what his routine was, his shopping habits, what he liked to buy and his favourites. Karen would phone Bill each morning and assure him that she would do his shopping for him and deliver his groceries to his door. This she did on her way home for her lunch break each day. He would leave his front door unlocked so Karen could take his shopping into his kitchen and unpack it for him.  He was overwhelmed by her kindness.

Sadly, due to the onset of dementia, Bill isn’t able to make this submission himself. But I do know that he would passionately endorse Karen’s nomination for this award and if he could, he would still make that daily visit to our community shop.  We miss him!

Karen really is our heroine and is fully deserving of this award. She truly underpins our community business’s tagline of ‘we go the extra mile so you don’t have to’.