When the African Aids orphans using rocks for desks in their tumbledown school saw another Western tourist wander into the rubble of their classroom they gave it little thought.

The visitors were holidaymakers from the plush Diani Sea Resort. Driven by the desire to see the Kenya that is not in the travel brochures, they had taken the five-minute walk to the shanty town of Mkwakwani and its rat-ridden ruin of a school on the outskirts of Mombasa.

What they saw horrified them. All promised "the sun and stars" – and all returned to their comfortable lifestyles in the West and forgot about it.

This was the story told by the school's downcast headmaster to another visitor who came by, this time a Scarborough hairdresser named Suzanne Mehmet. But she was not one to go home and forget. After seeing the state of the children and their classroom, her mind was already made up.

"When I make a promise I make a promise. I am a woman of my word and I won't forget you."

Seven years on, the evidence that her word is her bond is there for all to see. The Mkwakwani School has been completely rebuilt and is now named the Simon Carter School, in memory of Suzanne's cousin who was killed while doing aid work in Kenya. Thousands of people in Mkwakwani – not just the pupils – have benefited from her determination to follow the advice of her old English teacher to do a good deed every day.

It all began on New Year 's Eve 2001 when Suzanne was also on holiday with her husband, Mehmet Ali Mehmet, in the all-inclusive luxury of the Diani.

She was getting over a personal tragedy – the death of her cousin from a hospital infection after a liver transplant. "She was beautiful, 23, and had her whole life ahead of her. It is a tragedy when anyone dies but when it is someone so young it had a big effect on Mehmet and I. But God moves in mysterious ways."

Mysterious indeed – it was a trivial incident which was to shape her destiny. One of the guests dropped a cigarette lighter and a young African waiter, scarcely more than a child himself, picked it up. The guest was so off-hand and ungrateful, the Mehmets insisted the boy join them for a drink. "We got talking and I said 'I want to see the real Kenya, not the glitzy tourist version.'"

The following morning she got her wish – an eye-opening tour of entire communities which still seemed stuck in the Middle Ages. They existed without water or sanitation and were afflicted by cholera, typhoid, and child malnutrition.

"Animals are treated better. Then I went to the school. At the time there were 1,500 pupils sitting on sand and rubble floors with rocks for desks, sharing a pencil between six of them.

"The most important piece of equipment in the classroom was a rubber – so that the same piece of paper could be written on over and over again – and there they were trying to make some kind of future for themselves."

As if to underline the misery, it started to rain, bringing more brick and mortar down from the crumbling roof along with a constant stream of water.

"The children sat in corners in their rags trying not to get soaked. When we got back to the hotel that night it was meal time and getting dark and all the tourists were dressed in their jewels and finery
in the dining room eating vast amounts
of food.

"The lady sitting on the table opposite us started screaming that the temperature of her Chardonnay was not cold enough, as if the world was coming to an end. "I just said to myself: 'I can't sit among this, knowing that ten minutes walk down the road thousands of people are starving and would be grateful for a glass of clean water.'"

She could not sleep that night and the early hours found her sitting on the balcony. "I just had a strange feeling which I could not put into words. Perhaps it was my cousin's death. It made me look at my own mortality and the purpose and meaning of it all. Then the next morning I went back to the school and walked around, talking everything over with the head teacher."

"He said to me: 'I'm not going to get too excited. We have had many tourists who came. We have three child prodigies here who wanted to go to high school but are sitting at home in a mud hut and probably will be for the rest of their lives because they have no finance to further their education.'"

Her cousin Simon Carter, an aid worker for various charities including Live Aid, warned that endemic African corruption might divert any money she might raise. But if Suzanne harboured doubts they were dispelled by the memory of Ted Harben, her former English teacher at Scalby School, Scarborough, who was always telling pupils that if they got a chance to do a good deed every day they should take it, because the chance would not come again.

The late "Daddy" Harben as his pupils once called him, was a larger-than-life character. "He used to speak in a Shakespearian voice and I could hear him in my mind as if he was stood with me. I thought I have just got to do this good deed and I can't walk away because I am not going to get this chance again." In time, Ted was also to be recruited to the cause.

But at the beginning, after making her promises in Africa, Suzanne returned to work at her Renaissance Hair Salon in Dean Road and realised she had no idea about what to do next. She describes herself as "an 18-year-old trapped in an aging body" and at that moment, hairdressing was all she knew.

Then, as she started to chat about her African experience with her customers, many of them clients of 20 years standing, they started to offer money.

To Suzanne's surprise, within a matter of weeks they had enough to put all
three Mkwakwani child prodigies through high school.

"It was amazing. Then I had the mad idea we could build a school, and the rest his history."

She turned to her uncle, Graham
Taylor, then vicar of Cloughton, near Scarborough. He has since become bestselling author GP Taylor. "My uncle said: 'Are you going to save Kenya single-handed or do you need some help?'" They did internet research on setting up a charity to create what Suzanne calls "an invincible team of trustees".

Then she had another stroke of luck. He was called Haq. Architect Abdul Haq Khandwalla had studied for a masters degree at York University from 1983-84. The two met by chance, the bond between them was instant and Dr Khandwalla offered his professional services for free.

Just as things seemed to be going well tragedy struck. Her mentor and cousin, Simon Carter, was killed in a car crash in Kenya. But she realised she had to press on in Mkwakwani. The first thing was provide water and sanitation to halt the ravages of cholera and typhoid. At first no one thought they were going to find a fresh water source. When the drill struck water, the local population fell to its knees and thanked God.

Thousands in Mkwakwani now enjoy pure and free drinking water – as well as flushing toilets donated by Scarborough Rotary Club and Pocklington School. William Wilberforce's old school signed up to the project after two pupils met Suzanne on holiday.

Then there was a desk campaign, to ensure every child had one. They employed a charity for the disabled to make the desks, helping another good cause. Normally building a school in Kenya, where average pay is £1 a day, costs around £100,000. Dr Khandwalla got the job done for about a third of the price.

The charity built 22 classrooms – many sponsored by Raincliffe School, Scarborough – and the African school now has 2,000 children.

A library has been built in honour of Ted Harben and filled with the books he would have loved. Ted, who taught at Scalby School for 36 years and worked
for the charity before his death in July 2007, is pictured on the side of the building in cap and gown, complete with his good deed motto.

An orphan fund provides sponsorship for 30 children who have their fees, board, school uniform, books, and medical costs paid. One has Aids, and the charity is his lifeline. Two of the sponsored students this year became the charity's first graduates. It has performed many other small miracles – wheel chairs, hearing aids for a girl who had never heard a sound in her life for the sake of the £250 cost, life-saving cancer treatment for two women, again sponsored by Raincliffe School: too many to mention.

The charity and Mkwakwani had to measure up to yet another challenge when the Kenyan civil war broke out. In the middle of the conflict was a vulnerable woman whose life had been turned round by the charity. She was a widow thrown out on the streets, along with her five-year-old daughter and six-month-old baby, by her in-laws following the death of her husband who had also infected her with the Aids virus. The
baby died.

Pickering Rotary Club paid for a house to be built for her, along with a little shop. She worked her fingers to the bone making the business a success and called the house "her paradise".

She loved it so much she refused to leave when rioting broke out in her Likona district. Suzanne was about to make her annual trip to Kenya, although her family had begged her not to.

When she arrived she discovered the community had formed itself into a small army to stand guard over the school
24-hours a day in case the rebels swept down from the hills.

The guests at the hotel where Suzanne was staying were under orders not to leave the grounds. But when she heard her widow friend was still deep in the war zone, she knew she had to act.

She called her taxi driver, who was also doubling as her bodyguard, told the stunned hotel manager she was leaving for Likona, and gave him numbers to ring in the UK in case she never returned.

In Likona buildings were burning, but she found the widow safe in her home and still refusing to leave. Suzanne headed into Mombasa and obtained medical supplies and supplements.

For fresh water, Suzanne purchased a huge storage tank and hired a truck to transport it. "We could hear the rioters on one side and all these people on the other trying to get this water tank onto the truck before the rioting spread.

"But we did it and the widowed lady is doing really well. She said she wants
to live for her daughter and the charity
is going to do everything it can to
ensure she does. She is such an inspiration to me."

Suzanne is already planning new projects, with her husband by her side. He learnt about the suffering war can bring at first hand. He is a Turkish Cypriot whose family fled the Turkish invasion
of 1974 which led to the partitioning
of Cyprus.

The latest dream is to feed all 2,000 pupils and their families twice a day.

The United Nations has hailed the charity as a model scheme which has proved itself corruption-proof. They did so at a conference in Istanbul. When Suzanne and Haq were called on to give a presentation of their work, the terror of the Kenyan riots seemed nothing to the fearful feeling that going on stage prompted in her stomach.

She did help Haq do the talking that day, but the woman they are calling an Angel of Mercy would still have preferred to shuffle around in the background. Why did she not want to enjoy her moment? "Hey, the Turkish Prime Minister opened it, and I'm just a blonde hairdresser from Scarborough."

Suzanne Mehmet's campaign is supported by the Yorkshire Post.