A NEWPORT charity worker is helping poverty stricken families in India with donations from her local community.

Susan Baker, 65, who helps run non for profit-organisation Bettws in Bloom, returned from a trip to the Dona Paula region of Goa earlier this month where she and her daughter Paula, 43, donated clothes, toiletries and toys to the Mother Teresa orphanage in nearby Panaji.

It is the third time the pair have visited the region after discovering a passion for travelling on a trip to Singapore four years ago.

A year later they visited Goa and have continued to return to the region where they have made many friends, taking donations, some of which have been provided by the Bettws community, to support villagers living in poverty.

Mrs Baker said: “It’s an absolutely gorgeous place, but the poverty - I don’t know how people can say there is poverty in this country when you see it out there.

“The orphanage is not like an orphanage, there are children, then there are unmarried mothers and the elderly. It was heart breaking.

“We didn't go out there with the idea of helping but we stumbled across the orphanage and the poverty was so unbelievable we wanted to do something. We are helping, plus we get a holiday.”

Mrs Baker, who recently won an Extra Mile Award from Newport council for her work at the Bettws in Bloom centre at the heart of the Bettws estate, says she and her daughter are already thinking about returning to the country next year.