WHEN Kate Ellis decided to be a teacher, she never dreamed that might mean taking a class in a dirt-floor shack in the depths of a Kenyan slum.

Yet that was exactly what she and friend Laura Hill found themselves doing when they volunteered to devote four weeks of their life to some of the poorest people in the world.

The two teenagers from Stubbington were part of a nine-strong team working in Kenya with Transform, a volunteer programme run by UK Christian relief and development charity Tearfund.

Their first week in the sprawling slums of Nairobi - Mathare, Kibera and the ironically named Spring Valley - was a shock: raw sewage in the streets, dilapidated shacks for homes, stinking heat.

The classrooms where the girls taught were little more than huts with corrugated-iron roofs, one tiny window and no furniture whatsoever.

"There were about 30 children sitting on the floor in really cramped conditions," said Kate, 18. "It was just so hot and so dark in there that a couple of our team members fainted. I just wanted to get them all out and put them in a proper classroom."

The team also took part in several church services and visited projects set up in the slums by a Tearfund partner organisation, including a greetings card-making venture for women slum dwellers and a home for babies with AIDS.

The rest of their stay was spent working in The Maranda Special School in a village in Bondo district, western Kenya. This place was an education in itself.

"There were no lessons that we could see. The kids were just wandering around doing nothing," said Kate.

"Their bedrooms were like prison cells and they ate porridge for breakfast, lunch and dinner. We were furious about it - until someone told us that if those children had been left with their families they would have been left to die.

"They would have been rejected because of their special needs. At least there they were being given a chance. We had to forget our English way of looking at things."

Between stints levelling out the kitchen floor and painting a Noah's Ark mural in the dining room, the Transform team chose to devise some simple lessons.

"One day we used play dough we'd taken out with us," said Kate.

"We thought it would fill half-an-hour or so but they sat there for two-and-a-half hours playing with it. They'd never seen it before and they just loved it."

Since Laura and Kate returned home, they've struggled to make sense of what they've seen. They're both Christians and attend Holy Rood Church in Stubbington, but they will both admit the experience was a serious test of their faith.

Laura, 18, who has just started a geography degree at Swansea University, felt angry for much of the visit.

"The experience of poverty was overwhelming and it's something that will stay with me for the rest of my life," she said.

"I couldn't understand how the world could be so unfair, how some people can own so much while others have quite literally nothing. But although there was so much hurting in Kenya, people trust in God for everything and He is their hope. That has challenged me tremendously"

It was the irrepressible hope in people that will stay with Kate too. She's just beginning a degree in early childhood studies and social science at Canterbury Christchurch University College and hopes to return to Kenya when she has graduated.

"People we met were always looking forward, not concentrating on the fact they have a difficult life. They have nothing - but their faith was so rich compared with ours."

To find out more about Tearfund's Transform programme, visit www.tearfund.org/transform or call 020 8943 7777.