Helen Bingley featured in "The Lancashire Magazine"

Julie Frankland of The Lancashire Magazine meets the intrepid Lancashire lass helping to improve lives in one of the world’s most remote and dangerous regions.

Nobody has mobiles or even landline telephones but everyone knows when Helen Bingley comes to visit. Word of mouth ensures the businesswoman is greeted with garlands and other gifts whenever she goes to the North West Frontier of Pakistan. For many of its people, she is a heroine and the more you get to know her, the more you realise they are right.

For the best part of a decade, Helen has worked to bring emergency relief, healthcare and education to the province, a remote mountainous area on the Afghan border deemed so dangerous that voluntary organisations and even religious orders have withdrawn. But where angels fear to read, you’ll find 52-year-old Helen, sometimes with husband William, other times with daughter Andrea.