There can be few sayings quite so outdatedly sexist as "she's not just a pretty face", and yet if anyone embodies the cliché it's Natalia Vodianova. In the pantheon of Models Who Use Their Beauty and Celebrity for the Greater Good, Vodianova (36), is a colossus whose tireless charity work puts lifelong philanthropists to shame.

While most 22-year-olds were experimenting with a contour brush, Vodianova was launching the Naked Heart Foundation, an ambitious undertaking which, since its inception in 2004, has helped more than 10,000 children with mental, sensory and physical disabilities, while thousands more have benefited from inclusive play facilities in more than 150 Russian towns.

The foundation has also financed 200 playgrounds, a series of summer camps, seven occupational therapy rooms, a book about autism and 10 Russian non-governmental organisations that provide support to hundreds of families of children with special needs. Everything is free of charge, providing a much-needed service in a country whose attitude to children with special needs isn't exactly exemplary.

That this is a cause close to Vodianova's heart is due to her younger sister Oksana. "They told my mother she would never live past 10 years old," Vodianova says. "She's 30 and going strong. She's as healthy physically as anyone else but has slight cerebral palsy and very severe autism.