Read the small print before you donate

24 March 2007

And give generously viewers do: £18,300,392 on the night of last year’s event. But it would be a mistake to assume that the smiling kiddies were getting all the money. What’s this? A sum of £59,521 went to something called the Womenzone Community Centre in Bradford, which offers training for local women, plus a gym and steam room. Another £20,000 went to Until the Violence Stops, the domestic violence pressure group started by Eve Ensler, writer of The Vagina Monologues. Other handouts went to Brent Women’s Aid, Angolan Women’s Association and numerous local women’s groups. Perhaps most remarkably, £12,481 went to Women in Prison, a pressure group that campaigns against the incarceration of females, declaring, ‘Prison does not work. The best way to cut women’s offending is to deal with its root causes.’

In other words, some of the money you thought was going to buy wheelchairs for stricken children is really going to campaign on behalf of jailbirds. I am sure many of these charities do valuable work but, even so, to invoke images of sick children — the emblem of Children In Need being a bandaged teddy — and then to give much of the cash raised to battered women does seem a little underhand. To paraphrase the Ronseal advert, Children In Need doesn’t quite do what it says on the collection tin.

Perhaps of greatest interest to donors to Children In Need was the £56,123 which went to a charity called the Children’s Legal Centre, a group which offers free legal advice to children — or in some cases to fund legal cases. Most notable of these was the case of Shabina Begum, who took Denbigh High School, Luton, to court over its refusal to allow her to wear a jilbab — a full-length Islamic gown — in contravention of the school’s uniform policy. Shabina, who was represented by Cherie Booth, eventually lost her case in the House of Lords a year ago.

Was that really what donors had in mind when they whipped out their credit cards in reaction to the stories of juvenile cancer victims: that a slice of their donation would be going into the pockets of Cherie Blair to help a teenage girl sue her school over her refusal to wear a school uniform? I am all for charitable giving, but I do wish that BBC viewers would take a little more care to read the small print before falling for emotional blackmail of the corporation’s big charity campaigns.

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andy

November 18th, 2011 11:51am Report this comment

So are you saying that because you've identified 1% of the charities were not specifically for starving and injured children that you feel you have to 'warn' people about the 'abuses' and 'trickery' before they make a charitable donation?

I think it's a shame that some people need to see dying children in order be moved enough to decide to make a contribution, and in fact, the more people are helped by such widely promoted events - the better.

This is the most valuable use of your time rather than putting the same effort into something positive that would help the people you prefer to help?

Life is too short to sit around taking pot shots at people helping others when you can be helping them instead.

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