ASTONISHED organisers of a ‘green’ Tavistock campaign have found a new army of recruits who answered the call to keep the town litter free.

Jeff Moody, one of the organisers of the Tidy Tavi group, though he was going to have a quiet weekend because a large number of their ‘normal’ volunteers were engaged in celebrating the Queen’s 70 years on the throne.

Instead, eager litter-pickers from the town’s newly-arrived Ukrainian refugee population turned out in force to help give their host town a good spruce up.

The Ukrainians are being hosted by Tavistock families after escaping from the war being fought against Russia in their home country.

The Tidy Tavi group normally meets on the first Saturday of every month at the Meadowlands leisure centre where volunteers are loaned equipment to gather rubbish from around the town.

The rubbish is then collected in bags and is disposed by staff from West Devon Borough Council.

Jeff, however, had accepted that people would have business elsewhere with with plenty of Jubilee events going on around the town.

He admitted afterwards he could not have been more wrong.

Jeff said: ‘To be honest, I didn’t expect many people would turn up and that not a lot was going to happen.

‘Then all of a sudden, these groups of Ukrainians turned up. In fact, they turned up in three waves. In each of the groups, there was somebody who could speak at least reasonable English, so I was able to tell them what we were doing.’

Jeff said he had to give the new recruits a run-down on the health and safety procedures adopted by the group, who wear fluorescent jackets so they are visible to traffic.

The Ukrainian visitors were then put to work in the area around the Tavistock Primary School, where they did a good job.

He added: ‘They said they were living in Tavistock and that they wanted to keep the town beautiful. They said they had been here since April, but I really had no idea that there were so many Ukrainians here.

‘I don’t think it’s a one-off, either, because it sounds like they want to come every month while they are here. We were delighted to see them.’

‘I was quite touched because they said they were grateful over the help people in Tavistock had given them and they wanted to give something back. They weren’t just adults, because there was one child who must have been four years old.

It’s not the first time Tidy Tavi volunteers received some extra help during their monthly litter-pick. Last September, 29 players from Mount Kelly’s rugby squad helped scour Tavistock for litter to tidy up before the arrival of cyclists, spectators and camera crews during the Tour of Britain.