When her brother died in an horrific road accident, Joanne Standing was determined some good would come from the tragedy.

She decided to honour the memory of Peter Standing by continuing the work he had started to help street children in Brazil.

Joanne, 19, of Amherst Crescent, Hove, has just returned from Goiania, Brazil, where she spent nearly a month helping to build a home for boys rescued from a life of poverty and crime.

Peter Standing, 21, one of four Sussex friends killed when a truck slamm-ed into their car in Australia, had spent ten weeks working on the project.

Since Peter's death in May 1999, his family have raised about £24,000 to construct another home for the street children.

When Joanne arrived in Brazil with five of Peter's and her own friends, she had no building skills but quickly learned how to muck in with the locals.

Joanne said: "Two local builders had marked out the site and cleared some rubble. We dug trenches for the foundations and made the metal supports.

"They showed us what to do but it was a bit difficult because none of us spoke Portuguese. We mostly used body language."

During her stay, Joanne met three street children who knew Peter and were devastated by his death.

She said: "They said they really loved him and cried when he died. They were really touched we were there because of him.

"There were lots of memories of Pete who had told us so much about the place. I kept thinking how much he would have loved to see what we were doing.

"It helped me to understand why Pete had such a heart for the kids and how challenging the whole experience must have been - Pete was there for ten weeks on his own and didn't speak the language."

The building, due to be finished by Christmas, will be called the Peter Standing home, providing somewhere for children to live, go to school and learn new skills. It will be run by the charity Messio Resgate and the Standing family are continuing to raise money for its running costs.