A woman has spoken about the challenges she faced living like a refugee for a week in order to raise money for a camp for Syrian children in Lebanon.

Hazel - which is not her real name - wore the same clothes for seven days, slept in a tent in her garden, set herself a £10 food budget, cycled 30 miles to-and-form work each day and took just one cold shower.

Speaking about the insight it gave her into the experience of refugees, she said: "What was different for me was that obviously I knew the next week I would be eating well.

"It did strike me that if you don't know when it's going to end it's very hard to keep hopeful. I don't think I'd been that hungry for a very long time. My hair took on entirely new matted qualities."

Hazel has since returned from a trip with the persecution charity Open Doors to Lebanon where she helped run a camp for Syrian child refugees.

She raised nearly £1,000 for her refugee challenge, all of which went towards the running of the site, which offers things like face painting and games.

Hazel added: "A lot of the children didn't want to eat their lunch because they wanted to take it home for their families. At the face painting table, a lot of them wanted extra wet wipes so they could clean themselves because they were really pretty dirty."

"The church there do things like the camp fairly regularly, and they do also have a centre where a number of those children come for lessons, so they're getting an education, and have activities throughout the week."

More than one-million Syrian refugees were living in Lebanon in March 2016, according to the United Nations' Refugee Agency.

Open Doors is working with a local organisation in Lebanon to offer food packages and other basic supplies to Syrian refugees, as well as Christian literature and education for children.