The daughter of a Northwood and Pinner Liberal Synagogue leader has driven a bus to the Jungle refugee camp in Calais laden with food and other essential supplies purchased with NPLS members' donations.

Bristol-based Jess Wolvey was heartened by the response of congregants to an appeal for support in the synagogue newsletter. More than £750 was donated in less than a week.

Mrs Wolvey - a schools' sexual health and relationship educator - planned to spend half-term week volunteering in a "healing tent" for newly-arrived families.

She had been "touched" by members' generosity. "I think that Calais is so close, it contributes to the desire to help," she said. "We will be able to feed a decent number of people and we all know how important food is in our Jewish culture."

Despite moving out of London, Mrs Wolvey remains closely involved with NPLS, of which her father, Steve Herman, is president.

Spending time on kibbutz during her gap year in Israel helped foster a deep commitment to ecology and environmentalism.

The biodiesel-fuelled bus is also her home, customised mostly in her beloved purple and fitted with a wood-burning stove.

As an unusual sideline, she is a part-time circus performer, with a speciality of hula-hooping on stilts.