Veteran community volunteer Nazma Ramruttun, 62, has been honoured with the MTM Empowering Women accolade by influential magazine Mast. In her acceptance speech she said: “This is for Swindon.” Nazma is married to Darsun, a retired nurse and Swindon Health Authority senior manager who is also a voluntary worker. They live in Swindon and have four children and 10 grandchildren

EVEN by the standards of community stalwarts, Nazma Ramruttun is involved with a bewildering array of good causes.

Her roles include chairing Mental Health Act hearings, Voluntary Action Swindon and Broadgreen Organisation for Neighbourhood Development, being a member of Healthwatch and representing it on the steering group for nutrition at Great Western Hospital.

She is a Churchfields Academy governor and also a special governor for international projects there, a member of Swindon Old People’s forum and the Equality Coalition, a leading light in the twinning committee promoting links between Swindon and her birthplace, Mauritius, and was instrumental in twinning Churchfields and Belle Rose State Secondary School in that country.

Nazma is also a trustee of Swindon Equality Access Group, a qualified counsellor, a driving force in the equality weeks held at Swindon College and New College and a former chair of the Millen Advice Point and Swindon Asian Women’s Association.

Unsurprisingly, she’s enjoyed helping others for as long as she can remember.

“I’ve always liked caring roles,” she said. “That’s why, when here in England nurses were being recruited, I applied for that. I’d just left school.

“As a seven-year-old, when my mum would go and visit relatives like her sister-in-law, and I’d know that in the vicinity there was an elderly lady that lived on her own, I’d leave all the family and go to her.

“I’d go and fetch water for her. I felt like she was too vulnerable and old to go and get water from a distance.

“My mum would be saying to me, ‘We came to see relatives and you left us,’ and I’d say, ‘But this lady is lonely and needs somebody to talk to’.

“I was always like that. If I was going somewhere and I see somebody elderly or somebody with a learning disability and so forth I would go across and talk to them.”

Nazma was born in Port Louis, the capital of Mauritius, and is one of four siblings.

Her mother was a housewife, and her father died when Nazma was 13 months old.

“My mum remarried but my stepfather did not have a regular job. He was a plumber and electrician.”

Nazma added: “I was not born with a silver spoon in my mouth. I went through quite a lot of struggle.”

That struggle included staying the distance at school in an era when schooling had to be paid for. In 1972 Nazma responded to a British recruitment drive for nurses and came to train as a psychiatric nurse at a hospital in Oxfordshire.

It was there that she would meet her husband, a fellow trainee who is also from Mauritius. In those days trainee nurses were obliged to stay in strictly regulated accommodation, and Nazma’s time there helped to inspire one of her later projects, a group for Asian women in Swindon.

“Back home as a young girl you are chaperoned everywhere. Then you come here and you are all on your own. I used to describe my experience living in the nurses’ home as kind of my room being a cell.

“There were all of these regulations about having to switch your light off at 10 o’clock.

“There was only one Mauritian girl living in the nurses’ home but on different shifts, so we didn’t see each other.”

“I know for myself how it felt, coming to this big, wide world and being frightened.

“At Swindon Asian Women’s Association we had a safe place for them to meet, we had activities for them to do, and we signposted them to services. We were unique in that we did not look at age, religion and so forth.”

Nazma and Darsun came to Swindon in 1976, and Nazma worked at Burderop Hospital, the Seymour Clinic and Princess Margeret Hospital.

In the late 1980s, she founded Madina House, the collective name for two care homes which helped people with mental health issues and learning disabilities to lead full lives in the community.

The founding of Madina House is a remarkable story in itself. The couple’s daughter went into Princess Margaret Hospital for a minor procedure only to suffer serious brain damage.

Nazma, a devout Muslim, said: “In that room it was my bargain to God. She was on a life support machine.

“It was my bargain with Him that if a miracle happened I would agree to open a residential care home to give the unfortunate a family life.”

Madina House remained open until the mid-2000s, when Nazma suffered a bout of illness.

There was no sign outside the buildings identifying them as care facilities.

Nazma explained: “If you bring somebody into the community you do not put a label on them.”

The couple’s daughter went successfully through school and university and is a talented artist.

Nazma’s voluntary work came about partly as a result of her high profile in the care world. Her personality did the rest.

“I was asked to attend a meeting about black and ethnic minority disabled people. That was my first thing, in about 1992.

“Because I contribute a lot when I go to meetings – I like to ask questions and I like to put forward my opinions – somebody noticed and asked me to join the Millen Advice Point.

“I don’t like to just get myself involved with things that I do not know, so I asked to go as an observer, and from there I became a member, vice-chair, shared chair, and chair.”

It was the start of the long career in voluntary work that her recent award recognises.

“There’s a reward with volunteering,” said Nazma. “You can see what you have put in and what is coming out.

“If somebody is smiling because you’ve done a little something for them, that’s a big, big reward.”