The thing about Carolyn Boyd is that she is extremely modest and down to earth. Despite the fact that she is really a bit of a 'superwoman'.

Carolyn, however, would be horrified at such a description.

For the past decade Carolyn has been working to help women affected by the war in ex-Yugoslavia. She has heard unimaginably harrowing tales and witnessed tragic scenes. Yet she has a real zest, enthusiasm and energy for life. And the women in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina just love her.

Although her home is now in Croatia, her roots lie in Glasgow where she was born and brought up and she describes her childhood there as, "very, very normal". Her early adulthood life in Eastern Europe was a stark contrast and she admits that she never expected to find herself living in what is now ex-Yugoslavia.

She explains: "The whole thing started when I applied to the British Council in 1989 for a scholarship to study art. I had already completed my degree at Glasgow School of Art in painting and drawing but I wanted to experience another culture and environment for inspiration. So I applied to go to Yugoslavia as I felt it was close enough to the UK but far enough to be interesting. I succeeded and came over in September 1989 just at the brink of the fall of communism although I didn't realise that at the time."

Carolyn, who is 37, quickly learned Croatian, or Serb-Croat as it was known then, and spent the whole of that academic year travelling around what is now Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina drawing people, drawing the architecture, getting to know the different people and dialects and really getting to love the country.

She smiles as she says: "I remember getting a letter from my mum at one point saying, 'What are you doing spending so much time learning Serb-Croat? That will do nothing for you in life. It's a total waste of time."

The year's experience clearly had a huge impact on her and she was delighted when friends asked her to return for their wedding in 1991.

But while she was out there the air attacks on Zagreb began and her flight was cancelled. So she stayed - much to her parent's horror. "I somehow felt it was where I wanted to be. It sounds a bit silly but I wanted to be there. So I spent a few months literally going from one air raid shelter to another and I was deeply moved by people's courage and determination to stay where they were and not run away from it."

Carolyn was committed to an art exhibition in Vienna. Then was accepted to spend four months in Russia as part of the Glasgow European City of Culture Year. But she still felt a very strong pull and longing to be back in the region she had grown to love.

"As soon as I finished I came back to Zagreb when war was at its height. I really felt I could contribute something. I felt there weren’t many English speakers who could speak the local language so I immediately volunteered in an ecumenical Christian organisation taking down the accounts of the churches and religious communities and translating them into English and sending them abroad. They were appeals for help."

Beside Carolyn sat a young man who did the same into French. His name was Miroslav Tomasovic and was to later become Carolyn's husband.

Carolyn also volunteered as an interpreter for a group of women from Geneva and she recalls: "At the time there was such chaos that you just went where you were needed. We went to transit camps, run by UNHCR (United Nations Commissioner for Refugees) in the town of Karlovac south of Zagreb, where a lot of the women were coming out of the so-called rape camps and detention centres in Bosnia and would come and get checked through with the UNHCR and then would go on to foreign countries as refugees. I would take down their accounts and witnesses. It was very moving but quite disturbing. I remember it was dark and a very foggy and icy day when I went. It was the middle of November and the whole image of semi-destroyed cities and these women in tears, deeply traumatised, made me think that I could never go back to Scotland and carry on as normal. I just thought, 'I've got to do something.' "

Carolyn finished interpreting for the group but they got in touch with her a few months later and invited her to Geneva. At the time Carolyn was financing her existence as the official artist for the British UN troops.

She went to Geneva where she met Myra Blyth, who was then the Europe Secretary at the World Council of Churches and is now the General Secretary of the Baptist Union of Great Britain. She is also from Dennistoun in Glasgow. "I immediately clicked with her," says Carolyn. "She immediately shook my hand and said, 'Carolyn it's lovely to see you and let me just introduce you to my friends. This is our new field co-ordinator for what was Yugoslavia.' My jaw just dropped and I said, 'Myra are you sure? Me? You never told me about this before.' She said, 'We saw the way you were working with the women in the transit camp and I just know you are the person that would be able to do this for us.' I said, 'Myra, I don't even know how to send a fax, I have never written a report in my life. I can only paint.' She said, 'If we believe in you then you start believing in your own abilities. You can do it.'

It is easy to understand why Myra had such faith in Carolyn. She is warm, kind, gregarious and giving - and she listens to people when they talk. However, she admits that she was slightly daunted by the task that lay ahead and knowing that she was responsible for establishing and launching the Ecumenical Women's Solidarity Fund.

"I didn't know how to start. I spent the first few weeks just sitting in refugee camps listening to women. Because I knew the languages and had travelled extensively around the countries the women were coming from - Croatia and Bosnia - I could say, 'Oh yes I've been to Doboj. I was there two years ago and I know that street. So that was where you lived. '

We could encourage and assist them but we would really have to listen. From then on things started to develop until today we are celebrating our 10th anniversary in April and it was initially a six month initiative."

Although Carolyn speaks freely and confidently about the experience she admits that, at times, it was difficult to cope with. "To begin with I wasn't prepared for the horror I would see and hear. Because I made a point of spending most of my time listening I would listen to what the women went through and some of the things I heard were things in my wildest dreams I wouldn't dream up. I was quite disturbed. The first three years were emotionally exhausting. There wasn't really a mechanism for which I could chat to someone about it or get some support, apart from my church in Glasgow – Burnside Parish Church, which supported me prayerfully throughout and I was very conscious of that. At one point I was frightened to open my door at night. I was anticipating awful things that would happen although nothing has happened to me."

She adds: "Then I realised if I was to be of any help to anyone and to keep my own sanity that I would have to have some kind of emotional wall inside. So I had to build up my own mechanism to stand back and to never look upset when someone was talking to me and to completely close off. At the beginning I would have posters up in the room I was staying in with maps of what was happening where. I decided that I would take everything down. When I go into my room or the flat I would have nothing to do with what was happening in the war or the region. Going into a quiet flat was helpful."

Carolyn is also comforted to know that the work she has been involved in has made a real difference to people's lives. Referring to just one woman she says: "I met one lady as a barefoot refugee in a centre in Zagreb who had been abused by Serbian soldiers and was an emotional wreck. Now she is a very highly thought of doctor and is running the largest programme we have in the region and she is a wonderful woman who has inspired and encouraged so many other people. She has changed and saved so many people's lives and when I see that woman as she was 10 years ago and the woman she is today, if, nothing else, that kind of change has made everything worthwhile."

Carolyn and her husband Miro, who was born in Croatia but brought up in Belgium, also spent much of their time taking aid to towns under siege. But during one of their trips disaster struck and they were involved in a serious car accident.

"We were supposed to join an interfaith convoy where the main Islamic leaders and armies would only take that convoy through. My Dad had given me huge bags of socks donated from one of his business contacts and we had parts from two-way radios. It was the beginning of February and the weather was really bad and the winds blew our car down the cliff on the Dalmatian coast. I almost lost my right hand and was very badly injured and was in hospital for several months."

Carolyn was the only female civilian in the plastic surgery unit of the hospital and all the other patients were men from the frontline with the most horrendous injuries. "I spent a lot of time talking to the soldiers and it was good to get to know them and know what they had been through."

In fact Carolyn spent so much time either talking to them or drawing their portraits, which she was able to do with her left hand, that the chief surgeon asked her if she would sit with them and keep them calm when they came out of surgery.

It was a challenging time and Carolyn admits: "That was the only space in the programme which was a down period for me as I lost a lot of self-confidence about continuing the fund but I really feel looking back it was a positive experience. I lost everything. I lost the ability to walk. I couldn't even use my arm. I had to be fed, I couldn't even go to the toilet. It was quite humiliating really but I didn't see it in that way. I felt that at once I could really understand what some o the other women had gone through. I realised what it was like to be brought to your knees and totally reliant on other people. In a way I learned a lot from it and I also learned a lot about myself."

She adds: "In many ways it was a good learning curve and, spiritually, an important time for me. I realised sometimes that it takes you to fall on your knees before you can get up and walk properly."

Carolyn manages to juggle her hectic schedule with the EWSF, which involves extensive travelling around the region, with motherhood and she smiles in delight when she talks about seven-year-old Olivia and four-year-old David. Both children speak Croatian and English fluently although as Carolyn says: "They don't have a Scottish accent despite the fact that I am Scottish. They speak English as foreigners which is really quite cute."

When the children were younger they even joined their mother on her travels and Carolyn believes this added an extra strength to her work.

"Everywhere I went they went where I knew they wouldn't be in danger. It was a real icebreaker with the women and it built up a mutual respect and confidence in each other." However she adds: "I won't take my daughter anymore. The last time I took her with me was when she was five and a half and she started asking questions about why Bosnia was so messy and why houses were broken and when talked to her about the war I just felt it was too much of a burden for a five-year-old to think about." Family ties are important to Carolyn and she remains in close contact with her parents and brother in Glasgow. They are also regular visitors to Carolyn and Miro's home in the holiday town of Omis on the Adriatic Coast.

When you visit the region, which was torn apart by the war, things do, physically, appear to be recovering. However Carolyn explains:

"When you really get to know the people you realise that the wounds and traumas will never go away and the hope for the future is working with young people so that false stereotypes and prejudices, which cannot help being passed on from parents to children, are lessened and the hope is that a new generation of people will open up to a co-existence and interfaith life which was in this region before the war."

She is hopeful that the EWSF will one day have outlived its usefulness and that the people will rebuild their lives. But she says: "I think people are concerned that in 2004 everything will stop - when foreign aid agencies pull out of the region. It's important for the people to know that they are not alone and that we will continue to be concerned and show solidarity.

The main problem is that as the European Union reshapes and opens its borders, the eastern flanks are becoming like the lower caste of Europe and feeling left out. The more borders that are being broken in Europe, the more they seem to be getting built up here. There are extraordinarily difficult problems of trafficking and corruption and I think the EU is frightened of this part of Europe. Tightening up the borders and closing off communication, as far as communication support and aid goes, could lead to an unstable situation and a destabilizing factor as was the case at the start of the 1990s."

It would be easy to understand if Carolyn felt exhausted and drained by her experiences over the past 10 years. But it is exactly the opposite.

She says: "I find it so encouraging because I know what it was like before we started and the utter desperation of people's lives and to see women smiling and people working together and helping one another in a community – it is great. It is women that are building it all again which I find very inspiring and I feel very humbled by them and everything they do."