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As a fundraiser for the British Red Cross in the charity’s London head office, my day-to-day work is a million miles away from the disaster zones and emergencies that the Red Cross responds to in Britain and around the world.

But when I joined the organisation two-and-a-half years ago I volunteered to train for an international emergency response team.

I wanted to experience Red Cross work at first hand and see for myself what the money I help raise is used for.

When the earthquake in China struck, I knew there was a good chance I might be called out for my first deployment.

I am part of a team that specialises in sanitation.

A major part of what we do is to provide emergency toilet facilities, which may not sound appealing, but it is a vital part of responding to an emergency.

The work we do is genuinely lifesaving and makes a huge difference to the quality of people’s lives.

But it’s not just a case of digging latrines and putting up toilets, although that is part of the job.

A lot of work goes into teaching people in affected areas how to build toilets, where the best places to site them are, how to maintain them and also basic hygiene education.

It’s important that, once our team has left, people are still able to carry on the work themselves and make sure the threat of disease remains in check.

When the call came - although I was already on standby, packed and ready to go - we only got 24 hours notice that we were going to China.

Our team of four flew out to Beijing and then from Beijing to Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province where the earthquake struck.

For the first few days we commuted from there out into the field.

In Chengdu itself, damage to buildings wasn’t very obvious, but as we moved out of the city and into the surrounding countryside towards the epicentre, the level of destruction was clear.Ìý

Some areas where we were working were completely devastated.

There were hardly any buildings left standing, there was rubble everywhere, thousands of people - many of them children who had been in school when the quake struck - had been killed.

The first week was probably the hardest. We were staying a long way from the areas where we were working, every day we were spending hours in the car and the weather was terrible.

There was torrential rain, almost like a monsoon, which made our work more difficult, and made life for the millions of people living in tents even harder.

Although our team was staying in hotels initially – first in Chengdu and then in Deyang - we did feel vulnerable to aftershocks which were happening daily.

It’s quite an experience to feel an earthquake when you’re on the ninth floor of a hotel, especially knowing that so many buildings have already collapsed.

We had special training so we’d know what to do when an earthquake struck, but in that situation you can’t help but feel vulnerable.

Most of our work was in two townships called Jiulong and Banqiao, and after about ten days of staying in hotels and commuting we moved into a camp set up by the Danish Red Cross in Jiulong itself.

It was great to be amongst other Red Cross aid workers from around the world – there were teams from Spain and Austria as well as Danes and Brits – but the most important thing was the difference it made to our relationship with the local people.

There was a real change when we started living alongside the community and it really helped us build a relationship with them and helped us better understand the local needs.

My job title was specialist support, which meant I did a lot of coordination and administration for the team, making sure the 300 flat pack toiletsÌý - enough for around 20,000 people - made it from the airport out to where they were needed and making sure the tools and a digger we had were in the right place at the right time.

Basic standards of hygiene were already very high but the rains, which were followed by intense heat, only worked to increase the danger of disease.

We went into improvised schools, which had been set up to give the children something to do during the day and to teach them about the importance of hand washing and using the toilets we had built.

Meanwhile, adults worked on the clean-up operation.

We carried out assessments, interviewing people in the towns to see what it was they most wanted and needed, and then tried to meet those needs as best we could.

Our interpreters, who were students from Chengdu University, and drivers, who had given up their jobs to come and help the relief effort, were amazing.

They worked so hard and took such good care of us, I really can’t praise them enough.

Alongside the international Red Cross teams, the Red Cross Society of China was also very active on the ground, along with the Chinese government and army, so it was great to see everyone working together to rebuild people’s lives.

While I was there almost everyone was still living in tents, but prefab temporary housing was already going up, which was very basic and provided just a couple of rooms per family, but was a definite step up from living under canvas.

The government plan is for every family to move into temporary accommodation as soon as possible after the quake, which will be at the end of this year.

After that it will be at least another three years before all the houses are rebuilt.

Going out to Sichuan with the Red Cross was an amazing experience. It’s definitely changed me and made me a lot less cynical.

When we were going we thought we may be heading into a very closed society and we weren’t sure how people would react to us, but when we arrived they were so friendly and open.

The work was a challenge and the situation was obviously quite traumatic at times, but the people we met were all still so optimistic about life, despite their suffering.

It was amazing to see how resilient people were, and hopefully I can hold on to a bit of that more positive outlook now I am back in London.

It was something I will never forget and I would love to go back in a year or so to see how people are getting on.

It would be great to revisit the people I worked with and the friends I made as they recover and get on with rebuilding their lives.Ìý

To donate to the British Red Cross China Earthquake Appeal visit their website by clicking on the link up at the top right hand side of this page or by calling 0845 054 7201