Children On The Edge was founded ten years ago by Body Shop owner Anita Roddick to help Romanian children living in appalling conditions in orphanages.

Since then the charity has set up a home for children and adults with special needs in southern Albania and a school for the blind in Sarajevo in Bosnia.

When the refugee crisis hit Kosovo and Albania, it funded drugs for the mobile clinic and provided shower units for weary and dirty refugees. In Romania it has opened an orphanage and a children's home and funded a hostel project.

Every year it runs a six-week playscheme in Romania where teams of volunteers go out for a two-week period to entertain the children. Each trip needs 20 volunteers, who come from all over the world, and this year's trip is already full.

The stated aim is to take each project to its natural completion and hand it over to nationals who are qualified to take the schemes forward. The focus is on child advocacy, helping them play and giving them access to healthcare which they would otherwise be denied.

Simon Dowe, 32, from Chichester, is development projects manager for Children On The Edge. Since 1991 he has taken part in the Romanian children's playschemes where he has put his drama degree to good use to help the youngsters develop their social skills.

Last year he visited Cabra, outside the Kosovar capital Pristina, and was appalled by what he saw.

He said: "It is not until you venture out of Pristina that you really see the destruction that has been inflicted on Kosovo.

"Driving along the road you can look to either side and see buildings and sometimes whole communities gutted by fire.

"Cabra has the very dubious honour of being the only village in Kosovo to have been totally destroyed during the conflict.

Children On The Edge has made a commitment to help the people of Cabra in whatever way we can.

"To date, we have based all three of our mobile hygiene units there and, as a long-term commitment, we have pledged to rebuild the village school in the spring.

"Because we are such a small organisation and because of our experience over the last ten years, we are able to treat each individual situation according to its individual needs."

Ben Wilkes, who also works in the Children On The Edge office, said: "People's sense of dignity and personal pride were taken away from them when they had to live on the road."

He said Children On The Edge has supplied a lot of medical aid and hygiene products, but it was the little things when they got home that really helped them rebuild.

He said: "Luxury goods like pots of pot-pourri enabled them to personalise their houses and help them get their identity back."

The first Body Shop branch was set up in Pristina last year and the second opened three weeks ago in Prezren, two-and-a-half hours outside the capital.

Between them, the two shops employ 11 local people, giving them a wage, a structure for their lives and helping them rebuild a sense of purpose.

The shops also enable people to get hold of goods at a price of between 30p and £3 which otherwise they would have little access to.

Every three months Body Shop products which are slightly damaged are loaded into a lorry at the company's headquarters in Littlehampton and shipped out to the Balkans.

Plans for the future include could include reaching out to displaced people in East Timor, a project currently under investigation by Children On The Edge project director Rachel Bentley.

Children On The Edge is part of the Body Shop Foundation which is a registered charity. If you want to make a donation, call 01903 850906 or look at their website at www.cote.org.uk.