A WOMAN who raised more than £3,000 to help victims of the Indonesian earthquake has travelled to the country to see how the money is being spent.

Sasti Watson, who lives in Manfield, near Darlington, with her husband, Richard, held a charity lunch and wrote to friends across the country asking for donations towards the fund after the earthquake in May this year.

The money was given to a school in a remote village in central Java, which had been badly damaged, and it was used to renovate six classrooms and one office under the direction of Mrs Watson and her brother, who is an engineer and lives close to the village.

Mrs Watson is from Indonesia but has lived in England for 33 years.

She has just returned from a month in the country and said: "When I first went out there the ceilings were down, the walls cracked and children were having to study in boiling hot tents.

"They are now using four of the classrooms and work is ongoing to fix two more. The school is transformed. It gives me a lump in my throat thinking about it."