United Kingdom — A grandmother has raised thousands of pounds to build a family home by making masses of a traditional Scottish sweet. After hearing Elizabeth Charo and her four children had been sleeping on a Kenyan beach for five years, the retired social worker from Perth desperately wanted to help.

Despite being told she was mad and it could not be done, Margaret Bayne, a Christian from Perth, was undeterred.

“I was determined to help this poor woman and her children who were living on a beach 20 minutes away from the school with no shelter,” she told STV.

Bayne, an avid baker, was able to put her skills to work immediately and began creating tons of traditional Scottish Tablet. The super-sweet snack made from sugar, condensed milk, and butter is a kind of crystallised fudge that, when made well, is rumoured to make grown Scots cry. After producing over 500 trays of the stuff, the retired social worker hit the streets with the sweet treats — selling them to friends, family, and the public in Perth and Dunfermline.

After raising more than £5000, it was time for the next phase of the plan: contact workmen in Kikambala, an hour away from Kenya’s second largest city of Mombasa. All thanks to the proceeds from the traditional confectionary, a two-roomed brick house for the Charo family was quickly erected in the grounds of a school, built by another Perth woman, over the last six years.

Last Autumn, Mrs. Bayne and her husband travelled to Kikambala to meet Elizabeth and her children and hand over the keys to their new home, named Vanilla Cottage after the sweet success that paid for it. The grandmother of five said she was very thankful to everyone who sold and bought her Tablet and admitted she was “gobsmacked” she had managed to raise enough money to pay for a house in Kenya.

By Michaela Whitton