A UGANDAN-BORN woman who fled Idi Amin’s brutal regime for Darlington has praised her North-East upbringing for fuelling her charity work in India.

Toral Sharan, now 52, was just six-years-old and the youngest of seven children when she fled Amin’s dictatorship in Uganda and entered the UK as a refugee with her mother and three siblings.

After spending several months in an immigration centre in Kent, the family were moved to Darlington and Mrs Sharan, nee Nathwani, attended Mount Pleasant Primary followed by Branksome School and Queen Elizabeth College.

She went on to work in Darlington Memorial Hospital as an anaesthetic nurse but left Darlington for India 12 years ago, waiting until her two sons were old enough for her to begin volunteering at a school for young orphan girls.

The school, Ramtrith Kanya Vidyala in Dehradun, educates 220 underprivileged and orphan girls and in the eight years of her involvement, Mrs Sharan said the project has opened up a whole new life in India.

She said: “It is sad but when the girls become orphans and go to live with uncles and aunts, they are seen as a burden.

“The family just want to use them as workers, to get them to do the housework and everything so we were seeing numbers at the school deplete.

“We thought about introducing a food programme and now they send them to school because they are being fed.

“It is the ugly side of poverty and it always seems to be the girls that suffer the most.”

Since Mrs Sharan’s involvement, the school has had electricity, toilets and a septic tank installed.

And the teachers, who were earning the equivalent of £3 per day, are now paid £40.

The project is funded by donations, including from Mrs Sharan’s husband Yogendra who once ran a chain of Spice Island restaurants and take-aways in the Darlington area and now owns the Table Talk restaurant in Middleton St George.

Mrs Sharan praised her upbringing in Darlington for giving her family the confidence to pursue their ambitions and on Saturday evening she will share a meal at Table Talk with more than a dozen of her former Darlington schoolteachers.

During her recent visit to Darlington, Mrs Sharan also spent time in London with her family to watch her brother, Dilip, also a former Queen Elizabeth student and now an Honorary Professor of Infection, receive an OBE.

She said: “None of this would have happened without Darlington and our journey through the schools and the sixth form.

“I love Darlington; we had the most wonderful upbringing and I am a real Darlington kind of lass!”