At an awards ceremony Monday honoring recipients of the Martha’s Vineyard Medal, Berta Welch quoted Mother Teresa: “We can do no great things. Only small things with great love.”

The words are displayed in the Chilmark Chocolates store, but they could have described the pursuits of each of the medal honorees: Mary Beth Grady and Allison Burger, the founders of Chilmark Chocolates; Elaine Cawley Weintraub, the creator of the Martha’s Vineyard African American Heritage Trail, and Lynne and Allen Whiting, she a longtime educator, he an Island painter.

The Martha’s Vineyard Medal is awarded by the Martha’s Vineyard Museum for commitment to preserving the arts, history and culture of the Island. On Monday evening, the recipients were honored with a ceremony at the museum’s new Vineyard Haven campus.

Ms. Grady and Ms. Burger founded Chilmark Chocolates more than three decades ago as an inclusive workplace that offered employment for people of all abilities. Monday evening, Ms. Grady and Ms. Burger welcomed more than a dozen Chilmark Chocolates employees to accept the medals with them. They presented each employee with a dreamcatcher from Wampanoag artist Doug Vanderhoop.

“We are truly grateful we have had the chance to run a small business with an inclusive team. Over the decades we have marveled at our coworkers. They are inspiring, resilient and so supportive of each other,” Ms. Grady said.

Ms. Grady and Ms. Burger have announced that after 33 years, Chilmark Chocolates will close in December.

Ms. Welch presented the award to Ms. Grady and Ms. Burger. “When the lines are out the door and down the road, Mary Beth and Allison remain to remind everybody that it’s only chocolate, yet we all know it’s so much more,” she said.

Allen and Lynne Whiting first met at the Field Gallery in West Tisbury in the 1970s, where Mr. Whiting was showing his early work. Ms. Whiting, who initially lived in a tent when she arrived on the Island, had a job working at the gallery. Mr. Whiting’s well-known oil paintings of the Island have since become part of the record of Island life. Ms. Whiting has devoted herself to education, teaching in multiple Island schools and serving as the museum’s first education director. She was a founding member of the West Tisbury Public Library foundation and serves as vice president of Island Grown Initiative.

Mr. Whiting thanked the women in his life who influenced him: his grandmother, who helped to found the Martha’s Vineyard Museum, and Helen Maley, Eileen Maley and Ms. Whiting, all of whom worked at the Field Gallery at one time.

“I could have driven a truck like my brother, but something about that scene just pulled me there to be part of the art scene,” Mr. Whiting said. “I know I’m one of many, many, many cogs in this wheel that have made this thing work, and I’m grateful.”

Storyteller, historian, and teacher Dr. Elaine Weintraub has completed many historical projects about the Island, the most well-known of which is the Martha’s Vineyard African American Heritage Trail. All around the Island, bronze plaques honor the history of African American people, from abolitionist Frederick Douglass, who gave a speech at the Federated Church in Edgartown in 1857, to pioneering nurse Anne P. Jennings, who owned a home in Oak Bluffs.

Ms. Weintraub was also an Island teacher for many years, working to create inclusive spaces for all students, including those who had recently arrived to the Island from Brazil.

Originally from Ireland, Ms. Weintraub arrived on the Vineyard 34 years ago. Accepting her medal, Ms. Weintraub remembered an experience she had while attending school in England. She described how during a lesson, a teacher wrote on the blackboard, “The Irish Problem,” and how reductive that felt to her as a proud Irish person.

“I think ever since then I’ve been very well aware that everybody’s story needs to be told. I’ve never yet met a child who can’t learn,” she said.