Bingley human rights campaigner Anjum Khan has returned from earthquake-devastated Haiti.

Mrs Khan, 42, flew out to assess the needs of those affected by the quake, which claimed the lives of more than 150,000 people when it struck in January.

She has set up the Basic Human Rights charity, which she runs from a converted garage at her home.

The mum-of-four now wants to raise £100,000 to help the children she says have nowhere set aside for them to escape from the trauma.

“We found these boys in one of the camps and they were digging out a trench so they could play football,” she said. “They had to do that every time they wanted to play.

“Half of the 54,000 people in the camp were children and there were no time- out areas for the children, no facility for them to have time away from the trauma.

“We are hoping to raise about £100,000 to put in a time-out zone to accommodate the younger end, to be assessed for their psychological needs and to give them a bit of space away.”

She said she was particularly impressed by the sense of hope she witnessed as she travelled the country.

She said: “Hope is what they need. I went there with preconceived ideas, that I needed to bring back information about the destruction and sadness, and there was plenty of that. But they are hoping.”

Mrs Khan was due to fly home on April 17, but was left stranded by the volcanic ash cloud which grounded flights in and out of the UK for several days. She managed to fly to JFK airport in New York where she was expecting to get her connecting flight to the UK.

Not knowing when the flights were due to resume, Mrs Khan decided to fly to Islamabad, where she had an office she could work from, and returned home nine days later than planned.

She said: “It brings it home that you can get a credit card and you can get home and you can control your life. We are very lucky.”

e-mail: tanya.orourke@telegraphandargus.co.uk