Over 4,000 bags of essential supplies for impoverished Jews in Eastern Europe have been collected through World Jewish Relief’s Operation Winter Survival campaign.

Donations of warm clothes, toiletries and nappies have come from families, shuls, schools and cheders.

Finchley Reform congregant Debra Brunner recently went to Belarus to help distribute WJR bags to clients such as Marina, a 43-year-old woman living with her husband and two children in a cramped two-bedroom flat.

A Ukrainian teenager living in a remote Jewish community has been presented with a Star of David necklace donated by a British girl who read about her in the JC.

Ilona Kaplyn, 15, featured in an article in May about Krivoy Rog — a former steel mining community 200 miles from the capital Kiev — after World Jewish Relief opened a community centre in the city.

World Jewish Relief chief executive Paul Anticoni had good reason to be absent from its dinner at London’s Guildhall on Monday which raised £1.5 million.

To give the 550 supporters a first-hand glimpse of the charity’s work, Mr Anticoni was in Ukraine for a video link-up to a key WJR project — a new community centre providing a lifeline for the 12,000 Jews in Krivoy Rog, a ravaged mining town 200 miles from the capital Kiev.

An Oxford graduate has taken part in a charity trip to Rwanda to help current or former street children reintegrate into family life and wider society.

Hannah Goldie, 22, spent a week in Kayonza, an eastern Rwandan province as part of a 10-person World Jewish Relief mission. She was chosen from close on 20 young applicants for a place largely financed by “a generous subsidy” from the Ansel Harris Memorial Fund.

A flashmob-style event drew World Jewish Relief supporters young and old to the 02 Centre in Finchley Road for a dance and promotional extravaganza.

They had responded to a viral marketing campaign urging them to turn up at the venue at a specified hour and to bring along good-as-new warm clothes or unopened toiletries.

Volunteers were treated to a wintry-themed performance by young local group Dancing With Louise to the appropriate strains of Ice Ice Baby and Cold As Ice.

Schools, shuls and individuals have responded positively to World Jewish Relief’s Operation Winter Survival to provide essential items for impoverished Jewish families in Eastern Europe.

Many organisations have planned group “packathons” to fill survival bags with donated warm clothes and toiletries. Members of United, Reform, Liberal and Masorti communities have joined forces for a Herts collection. In Kenton, Sobell Sinai primary pupils have adopted the project as part of a programme about the importance of helping deprived and vulnerable communities worldwide.

World Jewish Relief has launched an emergency appeal to assist those affected by the Indonesian earthquake.

The United, Reform and Liberal movements are among those backing the appeal, to provide desperately needed clean water, sanitation, temporary shelter and emergency healthcare for residents of Padang, one of Sumatra’s largest cities with a population of 900,000. WJR chief executive Paul Anticoni said: “We will be working with trusted partners on the ground to ensure that all funds raised will directly benefit those who need them most.”

Twiggy has spoken about her Jewish family — and her desire to visit Israel.

Before addressing a packed World Jewish Relief women’s lunch in Watford on Tuesday, the fashion icon and actress revealed that her maternal grandfather, who died when she was three, was Jewish. Her actor husband Leigh Lawson — who accompanied her to the lunch — is also halachically Jewish and they had hired a genealogist to discover more about their families.

World Jewish Relief, Anglo-Jewry’s main international relief charity, has been forced to cut some of its budgets in eastern Europe by 15 per cent because of the recession.

While none of its current or future projects have been dramatically affected, the charity has trimmed the amount it contributes to organisations such as the American Joint Distribution Committee, which undertakes day-to-day work in WJR’s three community centres in Poland and the Ukraine.