BBC Red Nose Day Snub

[Atesca]

[*]To pick up on

I prefer to support causes closer to home

Comic Relief does support many charities in this country too. One of the agencies that I deal with through school, a domestic violence counselling group that works closely with use and social services, is almost entirely funded by Comic Relief and does sterling work to support local families.

I am fully aware of that being as I worked for Comic Relief for a number of years - my meaning of closer to home is quite literally much closer to my house. Comic Relief has a very good grant aplication program that selects many worthy UK projects and splits the money very fairly between the UK and Africa. During my time working for them I visited and assisted several of their funded projects both in the UK and Africa and was able to see what those projects were able to accomplish for their local areas. When I now give to charity I try to do that for my own local area/town.

Oh and also, although this did all happen years ago the problem is that the NADB Chairman is currently ringing newspapers to tell them that he has been snubbed by Comic Relief during the run up to the current Red Nose Day. The cynic in me would suspect that this might be an attempt to get some sort of reflected publicity from one of the countries biggest charity events but obviously I have no substantiation for that and it is merely a suspicion based on a poor opinion of people taking a swipe at people who have previously given them funding.

I've spent the majority of my working life working in the charity/voluntary/fourth/*insert PC buzzword of week here* sector and, until I saw these comments from the NADB Chair, had a pretty good opinion of just about everyone else in it.

However, a couple of years ago I burned out and decided to make some changes and moved my paid employment into the gaming/casino industry for a break - obviously I'm dealing with far too many gamblers as my opinion of my fellow man seems to be in the toilet. Unfortunately the current economic situation etc means a move back into charity work and the lower wages there is a bit more difficult than I would like to take on, until I convince my bank manager to take mortgage payments in hand-carved spoons that is...

Oh, and if I figure that last bit out I'll post a tutorial post-haste

BigShot - the flourescent bib mob can be a really nice crowd to chat to now and then but they can be dodgy way to give to charity - the agency those guys work for take a commission for every direct debit arrangement they set up that can sometimes equal several month's donations - several months of giving before the charity gets a penny. The actual flourescent bibbers are sometimes completely unaware of this as well. Mind you, the ones here in Nottingham seem to have stopped asking me "Do you mind telling me why not?" I have no idea why, might have something to do with the fact I try to sell them double glazing when they stop me now...

Still time for sleep for me as I am on another week of night shifts, the only good thing about that is every day I get home from work just in time to take the dog up to the local patch of woods and have a brew as I watch the sun come up - just thought I'd insert a bushy note into a slightly overweight thread...

 

[firecrest]

Thanks for the link Rik. Ive often felt the same about aid as this speaker says. its great to actually see somebody speak about it.
I also think we see poverty in terms of "what havent these people got from OUR culture" When we see peoples without western amenities we immediately brand them as suffering. Two adverts greatly annoy me, and I think both are from oxfam. One is of a little boy talking about how he collects the grain and when he grows up he wants to be a miller and the other is a recent one of a little indian girl "so and so has to help her mother do the house work and doesnt have time to go to school" Well first of all we are told to pity the child who merely aspires to be hos villages miller. Why? he isnt starving, he has the bare nessesities, he is singing for christs sake, and whats more has lived this way for millenia. Same with the girl, its natural for children to work for their parents, its wholey unnatural to educate them in our (largely useless and outdated) education system. WHy does everybody need OUR education system? Like this speaker is saying education does not bring wealth, entrenpreneurs do.
Besides when I went to africa I gave the local school a load of books. we told them we would come back later and deliver the rest. When we did so I opened the log book to log the equipment and found most of the previous entries , including the books from earlier had carefully been tipexed out. The teacher then asked for some cash as "this would help more" I gave about £10 because I felt a bit confused and out of my depth. My point is, you cannot even put books in the hands of these children it does not reach them.
Build wells in the poorest areas by all means. give them education if you like. But most of all, Africa needs opportunities. Buy their fairtrade, visit the country, make the wildlife and the land profitable and it will stay and the people will have opportunitie for business if they so wish.

 

[Tadpole]

I meet many people who are driven, you could call them ‘aspirational’ and they cannot understand, just have no comprehension of why I do not aspire to have the same things as they do. Overseas Charity is like that, they, the movers and shakers, feel that everyone has a right to have all the things that they themselves desire. If the truth be told, ‘the poor’ can and do manage with a whole lost less than we think is possible. Mud huts may look as if they are falling down but unlike the tin huts that charities build to replace them, they are cool in the heat of the day and warm of a night.

Give them what they say they need and not what we think they need.

Leave them to live their life according to their culture and not try to impose our culture on them. That is the difference between ‘help’ and conquest.

 

[Wallenstein]

I
Leave them to live their life according to their culture and not try to impose our culture on them. That is the difference between ‘help’ and conquest.

Dying of dystentry at the age of 3 might be living life according to the indigenous culture - "it's what my people have always done" - but it'd take a harder heart than mine to argue that installing a waterpump in the village square is somehow reinforcing post-colonial patriarchal oppression by smug Western do-gooders.

By training a few millers you start removing a society's dependence on shipments of foreign grain, and by getting girls into schools it might help stamp out fun stuff like child rape and female circumcision (which although we're meant to be all nice moral-relativists can never be justified IMO).

Still, massive levels of infant mortality and violence against women have been part-and-parcel of indigenous cultures forever, so shame on anyone who tries to change that, eh?

 

[Tadpole]

Dying of dystentry at the age of 3 might be living life according to the indigenous culture - "it's what my people have always done" - but it'd take a harder heart than mine to argue that installing a waterpump in the village square is somehow reinforcing post-colonial patriarchal oppression by smug Western do-gooders.

By training a few millers you start removing a society's dependence on shipments of foreign grain, and by getting girls into schools it might help stamp out fun stuff like child rape and female circumcision (which although we're meant to be all nice moral-relativists can never be justified IMO).

Still, massive levels of infant mortality and violence against women have been part-and-parcel of indigenous cultures forever, so shame on anyone who tries to change that, eh?

If the villagers want a water pump, then install it, but just remember that just because you want to be able to use your blackberry or watch big brother, it does not mean that they do.

AS for milling, build a mill that they the locals can maintain, rather than a rollermill where the rollers are designed for western grain (hardness, moisture content, and size) build one suitable for their food, that way you don’t have to import western (Russian and Canadian) grain alongside the overseas mechanic needed to keep the thing running.

As for the last part of your post,
Matthew 7.5 "cast out first the beam out of thine eye, and then thou wilt see clearly to cast out the mote out of the eye of thy brother"
In the UK 1 in 10 kids are 'abused' before the age of 10,

 

[Wallenstein]

As for the last part of your post,
Matthew 7.5 "cast out first the beam out of thine eye, and then thou wilt see clearly to cast out the mote out of the eye of thy brother"
In the UK 1 in 10 kids are 'abused' before the age of 10,

I'm not sure the bible is the best thing to quote when referring to social justice, particularly women's rights and child protection

Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and bottom.[FONT=Arial, Helvetica] (I Samuel 15:2-3)[/FONT]

Samaria shall become desolate; for she hath rebelled against her God: they shall fall by the sword: their infants shall be dashed in pieces, and their women with child shall be ripped up.[FONT=Arial, Helvetica] (Hosea 13:16)[/FONT]

 

[Tadpole]

I'm not sure the bible is the best thing to quote when referring to social justice, particularly women's rights and child protection

the quote and not the source was the important thing, (and I think you knew that)
We should not be claiming to be standing on "the moral high ground" in an effort to impose our “society” on others. When in truth our ‘society’ is no better when it comes to protecting the innocent and the vulnerable.

 

[Wallenstein]

the quote and not the source was the important thing, (and I think you knew that)
We should not be claiming to be standing on "the moral high ground" in an effort to impose our “society” on others. When in truth our ‘society’ is no better when it comes to protecting the innocent and the vulnerable.

Compare infant mortality rates in the UK with indigenous cultures.

There's just no contest.

Compare deaths by violence in the UK (for all ages) with those in indigenous cultures.

Again, no contest.

The UK has its problems - of course it does - but we have an entire welfare state geared up to dealing with it. The fact that children still suffer here doesn't mean we can't allocate some resources to improving the situation overseas, particularly when the actions of Western societies have contrubuted to (and often directly caused) the problems.

 

[Tadpole]

Compare infant mortality rates in the UK with indigenous cultures.

There's just no contest.

Compare deaths by violence in the UK (for all ages) with those in indigenous cultures.

Again, no contest.

the thing is We are not, We are talking about the imposition of our culture on theirs. and the negitive impact that can have.
And before you say “but it’s for ‘the good of the people’”, well we’ve seen where that can lead.

 

[Wallenstein]

the thing is We are not, We are talking about the imposition of our culture on theirs. and the negitive impact that can have.
And before you say “but it’s for ‘the good of the people’”, well we’ve seen where that can lead.

How about the positive impact that same cultural imposition can have?

As a wise man once said "What have the Romans ever done for us?"*

* Apart from better sanitation and medicine and education and irrigation and public health and roads and a freshwater system and baths and public order...

Just 'cos it's "western" doesn't mean it's automatically a bad thing.

 

[Tadpole]

How about the positive impact that same cultural imposition can have?

As a wise man once said "What have the Romans ever done for us?"*

* Apart from better sanitation and medicine and education and irrigation and public health and roads and a freshwater system and baths and public order...

Just 'cos it's "western" doesn't mean it's automatically a bad thing.

Yes it does, if you're not a Westener. Any kind of cultural imposition is, by its very nature, bad. imposition is not a choice; it is imposed on a people against their will.

I think you are forgetting that many of the cultures we are currently “rescuing” before the imposition of Empire Rule, had a vibrant well thought out culture, that worked as well, if not better, than the one we imposed on them. The do-gooders of the Empire messed it up by doing it “the Empire way” and we today are going along the same route. Messing up all in the name of charity

 

[Wallenstein]

The phrase "imposition" is a loaded phrase... trade and commerce have always been massive drivers for cultural change, but in many cases this has been welcomed and encouraged by societies. Do you think Western companies should be banned by their own governments from operating in other markets?

If I demonstrate a waterpump to an African village, am I wrong to expect them to pay for it? Or am I wrong if I present it to them as a gift? Or should I have left them well alone while they die of dysentry? The fact of introducing a western cultural artefact - in this case a waterpump - will inevitably have an impact on the wider culture into which it's placed. Is it "imposition" if they never asked for a waterpump, or do we have a moral duty to share our technology in a marketplace of ideas?

 

[mr dazzler]

Go and have a chat with Mrs Jellyby, she'll have a few apt answer's I expect She was the dear lady in Dickens's Bleak House who had the “Borrioboola-Gha venture" in darkest deepest Africa as THE focus of her time and resources, while at home her own childeren were neglected and her husnband goes bankrupt and eventually becomes suicidal.

I have several times donated tools (and I mean best quality-ones that I would dearly like to keep and use myself) to a tool charity that sends tool kits for joiners, leatherworkers, tailors, shoemakers etc. They liaise closely with local people and listen to what they want, and are sensitive to local conditions. They ask for stuff which is known will be practical and ecomonically useful-not stuff which you simply want shut of. They have real respect for the aspirations of tradesmen there and want to see them freed to start trading for themselves-yet tools are almost impossible to get. The project assists them at an early stage you cant function without decent tool's.
Most charities (big household ones at least) to my mind seem like slick businesses, it must cost millions each week just for tv adverts, I dont give to big charities

 

[locum76]

in my book, giving them a well or selling it makes no difference as long s the pump is hand cranked so that they don't develope a dependence on fossil fuels which are going to be prohibitively expensive before too long.

 

[Wallenstein]

Just to say I don't disagree with any of the general points made about the dangers of well-intentioned but misplaced aid work.

But I just don't think that's an excuse to write of ventures like Comic Relief full-stop.

Targeted local action is always better, but if now and again you get the issue into the forefront of people's minds across society I think that's a good thing in general.

 

[rik_uk3]

Andrew Mwenda is not against giving some forms of aid, emergency disaster relief etc, but one phrase of his sticks in my min, "you don't get wealthy from receiving aid". A combination of events stopped me donating to Africa I'm sad to say and now I give UK charities.

I like this idea very much
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grameen_Bank

 

[locum76]

Andrew Mwenda is not against giving some forms of aid, emergency disaster relief etc, but one phrase of his sticks in my min, "you don't get wealthy from receiving aid". A combination of events stopped me donating to Africa I'm sad to say and now I give UK charities.

I like this idea very much
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grameen_Bank

good find rik, the grameen bank is held up to be one of the shining examples of social enterprise and a wonderful idea which has helped many people. I'd like to read yunus's autobiography.

 

[firecrest]

in my book, giving them a well or selling it makes no difference as long s the pump is hand cranked so that they don't develope a dependence on fossil fuels which are going to be prohibitively expensive before too long.

why shouldnt they have a right to destroy the planet if you do?

 

[j.dee69]

Hi, thanks for the heads up. this has really pi**** me off. as a biker myself i'll not be giving any more money to rednose day and a think most bikers will feel the same as me too.

 

[locum76]

why shouldnt they have a right to destroy the planet if you do?

yeah true i have a car.

however if we give fossil fueled kit to people who can hardly afford the fuel what happens in a couple of years when peak oil bites, the price of fossil fuel rockets and they can't afford it any more? we've have created a dependency and a reliance for them which they'll struggle to deal with. we might as well sell them heroin.

wouldn't it be better to introduce technology that isn't dependent on fossil fuels so they can sustain the well beyond the effects of peak oil?