There is a vivid green pitch in Kabul where the street children play.

It used to be a dust bowl in summer, scattered with stones, in a city where even the sparrows fell victim to war as poverty left hungry mouths to feed.

To the west, widows in the ancient city of Herat hand-feed mulberry leaves to silk worms, spinning the thread from their cocoons on to bobbins to weave reams of cloth.

The money they make buys them medicine, vegetables and rice.

All have been helped by a woman from a windswept island in the Outer Hebrides who they will only ever know by name.

To the public, Linda Norgrove was a courageous woman who committed her life to empowering women and children in one of the most dangerous countries in the world.

To her parents, she was simply their daughter, a "trailblazer" who "wished for a better world".

Linda was 36 when she was abducted and killed in Afghanistan.

An aid worker who had devoted her life to improving the lives of people in poor countries, she knew the dangers but stayed anyway.

Working with more than 200 Afghan professionals, her mission was to help them rebuild their country from within.

Not just the roads, the bridges or the markets, or the businesses producing honey and marble, but the people themselves, the women and children, as broken from war as the buildings around them.

She taught herself to speak Dari and would chat away with the farmers.

The same words of respect came back from everyone who worked with her. "She really listened to Afghans," they said. "She really cared."

Linda developed a passion for Third World countries as a teenager when her parents took her and her sister Sofie travelling in developing countries.

A "calm and peaceful" woman, Linda had spent her childhood on a croft on Lewis in Uig, where her family has lived for decades.

Her mother Lorna, a charity worker and crofter, and her father John, a water engineer, instilled in her a deep-rooted will to give back.

Her parents often raised funds for charity and would organise beach clean-ups, and a young Linda learned from their example how much could be done to help those less fortunate than herself.

In tribute to Linda's gentle nature, instead of turning inward or allowing their grief to turn bitter, John and Lorna Norgrove embraced a different path.

Dedicating themselves instead to the same country their daughter had pledged so much of her life to, the Norgroves set up a charity in her name to ensure her legacy.

Since her death seven years ago, the Linda Norgrove Foundation has raised well over £1m to help vulnerable women and children in Afghanistan.

The funds have gone to young girls in need of surgery for cleft palates, hip dysplasia or heart complications.

It has given daily cooked lunches for children at the Afghan Children's Circus.

Classes for children and training for widows in an extremely poor area of Kabul have been funded, too.

It has covered the cost of providing drinking water storage tanks in areas where children were regularly dying after drinking from polluted ponds.

"We want to do things like that, support projects that help people to stand on their own two feet," says John.

"We give to a wide variety of things where we know the outcome and can ensure the money gets to the people who need it."

The foundation is run entirely by volunteers and money comes in from a newsletter Lorna and John send out twice a year.

They update their regular donors on the projects they've helped to fund and politely ask if they would like to help again.

"We don't want to pressure anyone," says John, speaking from their home on Lewis. "It's more of an opportunity."

When they were running short of funds at Christmas, the pair put in as much of their own money as they could and asked for help.

"We were overwhelmed with the response," says John.

Sometimes though, when not quite prepared for it, a small thing still catches them out.

Like finding a plastic bag in the kitchen, with the words 'Onion Pie 17/9/10' written on it.

A bag from "that other world, the one we lived in before", wrote John on his blog.

"Nine days before Linda was kidnapped and three weeks before she died."

Linda's parents have flown out twice to Afghanistan since they lost their daughter.

They met her friends, those she worked with, and have gone on to meet others who are now being helped through them in her name.

There is now a project they are backing to give 15 Afghan girls the chance to learn mountaineering skills.

Their goal, to take on the highest mountain in Afghanistan, the tallest peak in the world outside the Himalayas.

"It's a difficult balance for us," says John. "On the one hand we know people are starving and their need is great so funding project likes this could be viewed as flippant.

"But the need for music, education or being given that chance to climb a mountain, life is about all those chances, too."

The couple were due to return to Afghanistan this July but the danger was deemed too great.

"Our other daughter gets too nervous when we go out there," says John.

"A friend who was organising our trip was traumatised by a terrorist raid in which one colleague was killed and another kidnapped.

"Then, a trustee's daughter was at Manchester when that bomb went off. It's not getting safer."

Still, Linda's parents' efforts continue, with medical scholarships for girls to go to private university.

There is a shortage of female doctors out in Afghanistan and with women often not allowed to go to male doctors, their presence is vital.

"Sometimes we wonder whether it's all a waste of time," the couple wrote in their most recent newsletter.

"But then we remind ourselves that we are never going to radically change the war or the politics but we certainly can significantly change and improve the lives of individual women and children there."

It is, in every way, what they believe their daughter would have wanted.

As Lorna and John said in tribute to her work: "Linda, and those rare people like her, are trailblazers for all of us who wish for a better world.

"They are the standard bearers of hope, the pe ople who make change happen so that societies throughout the world can have hope of future peace and self-determination.

"Linda lived in the day and always looked forward with hope - she would have wanted us to look forward with hope too."

For more information on the projects being run in Afghanistan or to find out how to support the Linda Norgrove Foundation please visit the foundation website.