Skip to main content

Too many charities

As I left the supermarket the other day I had to run the gauntlet of someone collecting for an obscure charity. I pointedly looked the other way and hurried past. This sounds heartless, but I genuinely believe that we have too many little charities, which result in dilution of the results that the money provided could bring.

Don't get me wrong - I am not talking about all small charities. I used to be a trustee of a local charity called the Zaslowya Project (ZP), and I am still a supporter. This was one of a good number of charities, usually with 'Chernobyl' in their name, that were set up in response to the Chernobyl nuclear reactor disaster, usually targeting children in neighbouring Belarus, which bore the brunt of the fallout.

Like most of these charities, ZP was set up to bring children to the UK on extend stays - usually about a  month - because it has been put about that by doing so, the level of radiation in the children's bodies dropped significantly and this extended their predicted lifespan by a considerable amount. It has turned out that the whole Chernobyl/radiation thing is something of a red herring. There was never any scientific basis for the original claim, the impact of the radiation seems significantly less than first thought, and even if it were true, taking the children out of the country for a few weeks could only ever have a minor, short term effect.

What ZP does now is concentrate on supporting the children back home - because there is a lot of poverty which, combined with rampant alcoholism amongst adults, results in some dire home lives. The charity does still bring children over on a small scale, but this is primarily to make bonds with donors - the real work goes on back in Belarus.

I have no problem with ZP, or a charity supporting, say, a local hospice. They do great work. No, the ones I have problems with, like the one in the supermarket foyer, are those that nibble away at a bigger charity's important work. They usually combine children with a disease - leukaemia is a common one, tugging at the heartstrings. And I absolutely understand why people feel the need to do this. However I would suggest that the most important thing with diseases is to get them cured, and it would be much better if the money given to these small charities was focussed instead with the big boys like Cancer Research. Yes, care is also important - and if you want to, go with something like Macmillan. But cure and prevention is by far the top priority. I'm afraid these little, well-meaning me-too outfits must divert funds from where they can do most good.

You may wonder if the same should also apply to something like ZP - as I mentioned this is one of many 'Chernobyl' charities. There are several others in Swindon alone. However, ZP concentrates on a single Belarusian town (as many of these charities do), confusingly called Zaslavl rather than Zaslowya (don't ask) - and as I've already indicated, it seems to be one of the few that really understands the need on the ground, rather than reprising the 'holiday from radiation' story.

The news suggests people are giving to charity less at the moment. The last thing I want to do is encourage that. But I do think we ought to be a bit more discriminating - find out a bit more about a charity before we donate. And that means, unless you know the charity already, ignoring those heart-rending pleas at the supermarket entrance.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Why I hate opera

If I'm honest, the title of this post is an exaggeration to make a point. I don't really hate opera. There are a couple of operas - notably Monteverdi's Incoranazione di Poppea and Purcell's Dido & Aeneas - that I quite like. But what I do find truly sickening is the reverence with which opera is treated, as if it were some particularly great art form. Nowhere was this more obvious than in ITV's 2010 gut-wrenchingly awful series Pop Star to Opera Star , where the likes of Alan Tichmarsh treated the real opera singers as if they were fragile pieces on Antiques Roadshow, and the music as if it were a gift of the gods. In my opinion - and I know not everyone agrees - opera is: Mediocre music Melodramatic plots Amateurishly hammy acting A forced and unpleasant singing style Ridiculously over-supported by public funds I won't even bother to go into any detail on the plots and the acting - this is just self-evident. But the other aspects need some exp

Is 5x3 the same as 3x5?

The Internet has gone mildly bonkers over a child in America who was marked down in a test because when asked to work out 5x3 by repeated addition he/she used 5+5+5 instead of 3+3+3+3+3. Those who support the teacher say that 5x3 means 'five lots of 3' where the complainants say that 'times' is commutative (reversible) so the distinction is meaningless as 5x3 and 3x5 are indistinguishable. It's certainly true that not all mathematical operations are commutative. I think we are all comfortable that 5-3 is not the same as 3-5.  However. This not true of multiplication (of numbers). And so if there is to be any distinction, it has to be in the use of English to interpret the 'x' sign. Unfortunately, even here there is no logical way of coming up with a definitive answer. I suspect most primary school teachers would expands 'times' as 'lots of' as mentioned above. So we get 5 x 3 as '5 lots of 3'. Unfortunately that only wor

Why backgammon is a better game than chess

I freely admit that chess, for those who enjoy it, is a wonderful game, but I honestly believe that as a game , backgammon is better (and this isn't just because I'm a lot better at playing backgammon than chess). Having relatively recently written a book on game theory, I have given quite a lot of thought to the nature of games, and from that I'd say that chess has two significant weaknesses compared with backgammon. One is the lack of randomness. Because backgammon includes the roll of the dice, it introduces a random factor into the play. Of course, a game that is totally random provides very little enjoyment. Tossing a coin isn't at all entertaining. But the clever thing about backgammon is that the randomness is contributory without dominating - there is still plenty of room for skill (apart from very flukey dice throws, I can always be beaten by a really good backgammon player), but the introduction of a random factor makes it more life-like, with more of a sense