A YORK-based charity, which started out with just £10 in the bank and a lot of ambition, has just celebrated its tenth anniversary.

Accomplish Children's Trust (ACT), which reached the milestone in November, has supported thousands of disabled children in Uganda.

It all started in 2005, when Rebecca Baldock (now Cornish), a physiotherapist working at York District Hospital, travelled to Kagando, a remote village in western Uganda to work as a volunteer at a mission hospital.

She returned home three years later determined to help these forgotten children further and tentatively founded ACT with six fellow trustees, including her parents, Rev Canon Martin Baldock, formerly of the parish of St Edward the Confessor in Dringhouses, and his wife Sue.

Moved by the terrible stories of abandoned babies and children, they were joined by three patrons from the region, TV broadcaster Harry Gration, Rev Canon John Young, a former chaplain at York St John University and Professor Gordon McGregor, a former principal at YSJU, who died recently.

Sue said: "These children are treated as worthless because society believes they are cursed.

"However, there are some parents who believe there must be something better for their children."

Financial support came from several York churches and ACT was able to open its first clinic in Kagando.

In 2017, a second clinic, the Kyaninga child development centre in Fort Portal, about 50 miles away from the first clinic, was opened by physiotherapist Fiona Beckerlegge, of Wheldrake, and the charity has yet more ambitious plans for the future.

Sue said: "We are still trying to spread our wings at the moment.

"In ten years our projects have grown beyond anyone's wildest dreams.

"We have a lot of supporters in York now and we thank them because without them it wouldn't bear thinking about."

Rebecca added: "It is a privilege to be part of this jigsaw of pieces which have seen facilities in Uganda change beyond recognition.

"It will be interesting to see what happens over the next ten years."

In addition to these two clinics, ACT runs a primary school for deaf or blind children - with plans in progress for a secondary school - and supports many other projects, including two vocational training centres and further schemes in Democratic Republic of Congo, a notoriously difficult country to work in, and Malawi.

For more information visit accomplishtrust.org.uk or find the charity on Facebook.

To donate go to mydonate.bt.com/charities/accomplishchildrenstrust