WAYNE Gutteridge heard today (Tues) that the Nepalese aid organisation he founded had achieved full charity status.

But, for the moment, the call that mattered came from a Nepalese relative who travelled 140 miles through a quake stricken zone to charge a mobile phone.

She said she was ok and living under a tarpaulin outside Kathmandu, said Wayne.

Wayne, from Hereford but now living in London, already knew that his wife’s village had been “flattened.”

“Thankfully everyone survived, they were out in the fields when the quake struck,” he said.

Wayne knew, too, that both staff he currently has in Nepal had come through.

He has, however, had to put off sending out a new group of volunteers good to go when news of the quake broke.

Wayne and his Nepalese wife Mina are keeping up with developments in Nepal as best they can through "intermittent" mobile phone and social media contact.

"We're working our way through a lot of phone cards," he said.

Wayne runs Education & Health Nepal (EHN) that selects and sends volunteers to run rural medical camps teaching projects and conservation work.

Only today was Wayne told  that EHN had achieved charity status.

Back in 2011 Wayne, a former student  of John Kyrle High School, Ross-on-Wye, featured in the Hereford Times  for the efforts he and Mina made in saving and re-locating an  orphanage in Nepal.