A student will be swapping books for construction when she heads to south east Asia to support disadvantaged youngsters during the school holidays.

Lilly Mathews, 16, will fly out to the Sabah region of Borneo on July 19 to undertake four weeks of volunteering with Camps International.

During her time there, she will be helping the community with projects such as the construction of schools to improve education and installing clean water filtration systems.

Lilly, who attends Hedingham School and lives in Castle Hedingham, will also be working on reforestation and tree nursery projects.

Both are schemes which will help safeguard the future for Borneo’s endangered wildlife and environmental re-cycling initiatives such as removing the marine refuse from fragile shorelines.

She said: “I first heard about Camps International, who are an international volunteer travel group, when they visited my secondary school and I was immediately interested in the expeditions they offered.

“I thought this was an amazing opportunity to do something positive and life changing for the communities I would be working with and for the environment.”

Before confirming her trip to Borneo, Lilly had to raise £3,800 to cover travel and accommodation costs for the trip. Much of the money has been raised through car boot sales, craft fairs and bake sales.

Lilly has also saved money from Christmas and birthday presents, while kind donations have been made by Great Yeldham companies, S&M Contractors Limited and Fireplace-Fitters.

Lilly added: “The costs of this expedition needed to be funded entirely by myself so I undertook various fundraising ideas and started to seek sponsorship for the trip.

“I would like to thank Richard Sillery of Fireplace Fitters and Steve Gomez and Sean McLean of S&M Contractors for their generous donations, along with all my family and friends who have contributed in so many ways to this incredible opportunity.”