closures, additions, plans

Gosh, feels like I havent updated this blog for yonks, but still, some things have been happening.

• We have unfortunately decided to close down one of the charities that I was involved in which helped children in hospital, it was simply not viable any more given the changes in technology and lack of funding. Shame, I have to admit, I was hoping to have so much done with it…but sad
• On the other hand, the Hillingdon Home Start is going from strength to strength, we had 3 more trustees join and we are now sustainable, agile, mobile and fun times indeed.
• We are going to hold a nice little celebration of our wonderful volunteers, who help the families in need, a big big fuss needs to be made of them. Here is a sample of feedback we received for our wonderful volunteers. A big big thank you for them

• We also have now got a nice little website going for the charity, it should be launched pretty soon, I am quite chuffed about it.
• You know i was volunteering to several charities to see if they needed a photographer, but both came back and said no . they already have too many photographers helping, drats. I was so looking forward to it.

What do you do when you face a problem like Haiti?

Haiti, along with so many other countries which are in distress, is a problem which was made worse due to the help of the United Nations and the white saviour complex. Or the white man’s burden. Read this brilliant book by William Easterly on this. I quote:

The world's poor need more focused, trial-and-error programs like the Malawian net distribution and fewer ambitious plans to cure poverty, Easterly argues. There are two tragedies of the world's poor. The first is the one we hear about: that so many people suffer so much for lack of inexpensive remedies.

The second, he says, "is the tragedy in which the West spent $2.3 trillion on foreign aid over the last five decades and still had not managed to get 12-cent medicines to children to prevent half of all malaria deaths. The West spent $2.3 trillion and still had not managed to get $4 bed nets to poor families. The West spent $2.3 trillion and still had not managed to get $3 to each new mother to prevent five million child deaths." The West is not stingy. It is ineffective.

This is the primary reason why I never donate to any of the international appeals. Ever. I am simply not sure that my contributions (the voluntary sort) and the contributions that the government does on my behalf (the involuntary part) is being used effectively. I cannot do much about the government’s donations but I can stop spending my hard earned money being frittered away at incompetence. I wouldn't do that to my money with a bad fund manager, why not for charity? After all, both are investments designed to provide good outputs, no? Basically, in many ways, this entire western world aid industry to the other world is a colonial and frankly racist exercise. It is just dressed up in some “do good” clothing and we are done with it. The disasters committee shows some heart wrenching images and video on tv and we, the poor saps, think, awwwww, SOMETHING must be done, money is thrown at the vast aid machine and nothing (usually) gets done and if something does get done, its usually the wrong thing. Think back on the Kony madness. 2 months after that ridiculous bout of videos and facebook updates, what has actually happened? nothing. See what I mean? This is feel good hypocrisy at its best. Dont worry, this is not just for charity, same with foreign policy as well. See the current Arabian revolutions, when the revolutions were happening, then everybody was jumping up and down to help and object and moan and groan. Now that the problem in Tunisia, Egypt, Syria and Bahrain is worse (they are still ruled by despots, they are still no jobs), nobody cares. Heck, the USA is back to selling arms to Bahrain. Brilliant.

Haiti is a classic example of how the western world has managed to screw it over. It is one of the classic cases of how good intentions lead one to hell. Here, read about what one aid worker says. For example, the USA used to do good sometimes, but these days? Every time it intervenes in any country, it usually manages to screw up things and leave things behind which are more broken that others. You don't have to look at Israel, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc. etc. just look at Haiti. I quote

1. Good intentions aren't enough.

2. Rose-colored glasses are bullshit.

3. The white savior industrial complex is real, demonstrated daily by feel good aid programs that probably don't work, or feel good causes like Kony 2012 that generate plenty of buzz but don't add up to much when people are actually supposed to do something.

4. You can't help people who don't want to help themselves.

5. True altruism is an incredibly rare thing. (See #3)

6. Little victories must be celebrated if you want to protect yourself from the crippling effects of the larger failure.

So what do you do? the author says this

If I were to do it all again, I wouldn't design a solution. It isn't my place to do that. What I'd do is try and be a useful resource for a group of people or a community that have a much better understanding of their problems than I do, and want to work together toward finding solutions. I wouldn't come in as the guy with the answer. I'd come in as the guy willing to try and help them in any way possible as they find their own answer, and act as the bridge between that answer, and the money and resources needed to make it happen.

Or, perhaps if I really wanted to help, I wouldn't ever come to Haiti to begin with. I'd keep my fight at home in the United States, rallying people to try and build awareness that places like Haiti suffer because of policies benefitting our government, our corporations, and ultimately, ourselves. Policies created by our politicians, sometimes with our consent (the Iraq War) and sometimes as a result of special interests (the Supreme Court's campaign finance reform ruling), result in massive problems for other people in the world. Sometimes I wonder if that truly ever can be remedied. 

ha!

Making good with Photography

I decided to do a bit more with the photography bit, so have volunteered to help two charities with my photography.

First is Age Concern at Kingston upon Thames. I find OAP’s faces extremely photogenic. I look forward to helping them with my camera.

Second is the Hammersmith and Fulham Volunteer Centre. This should be nice.

I am looking forward to this and hope I get selected…

Charity tax row: Donors warn of 'brake' on donations

As you know, I have been associated with charities here in the UK for some time now. With my economist hat on, with the donor hat on, with the charity management hat on, with my libertarian hat on and with my citizen taxpayer hat on, I am therefore conflicted by this proposal. Basically, the proposal here says that

From 2013, previously uncapped tax reliefs - including on charitable donations - would be capped at £50,000, or 25% of a person's income if that is higher. The government says it wants to end the practice of wealthy people minimizing their tax bill - sometimes to zero - by charity giving.

First the basic reason why tax relief is granted. All for a good reason, that the government wants to encourage philanthropy. So far so good. But given the potential of the tax abuse and the need for the bloody government to squeeze more taxes out of us, it is reducing relief. In any case, I dont like taxes anyhooo. So that is a different argument.

So here is my economist position. Suck it up. You are paying your charity donations out of your own free will. You should pay for taxes on ALL your income, irrespective of where you spend it. This idea of tax credits/relief being dependent upon where I spend my money is stupid. How about this argument which is absurdo reductio? The government wants to improve the shipbuilding capability in the UK so it decides to give tax relief on the amounts you spend to purchase your own mega boats and super tankers. How do you think that will go down? You laugh? The government already does it for companies who invest in plant and equipment and research and development and and and. This is a stupid way to drive industrial policy. Simplify life, and remove all these bloody exceptions and stuff.

My libertarian position is similar. I shouldnt be taxed at all, but if I am, then I should be taxed on my philanthropic giving just like I am taxed on all my consumption.

My charity management hat on, £50k? lol, I should be that lucky to get that much. The charities that I am involved in are tiny, less than £150k in revenue, i can only wish I had donors who donate more than £50. This wont impact me at all, if you are donating £200-3000 which is our usual individual contributions, the tax hit wont make a difference.

With my donor hat on, I dont think I will donate more than 50k any time soon, but my estate could, and I dont see a problem in paying taxes on my income. Why would I want to have tax credits? Only if I think that I am replacing government activity with my charity donations no? But I dont, i see this as a different activity so tax away.

With my citizen taxpayer hat on, can the frikking government please stop taxing me?

How volunteers are turning around families in distress

Home-Start UK's volunteers were meant to be a helping hand for families - now they feel more like firefighters. Channel 4 News meets some of the families struggling to cope in jobless Britain.

Politicians often talk about the financial pressure on Britain's families - they use phrases like the "squeezed middle" and the "working poor" to describe parents who hold down jobs but have been hit by economic uncertainty and rising prices, writes Victoria James.

But we have been told by charities working across Britain that money worries are just the start of people's problems. Until recently, national family support charity Home-Start UKtold us, a family might be able to weather a shock like unemployment. But with incomes stretched, people are now a lot less resilient. And when the financial problems can't be fixed, other ones pile up on top - depression, housing problems and ill-health. Families approach a "tipping point", barely able to keep things together, and on the brink of tumbling into crisis.

Home-Start UK allowed us access to their work in two areas that have seen a real rise in families at this tipping point, Birmingham and Bedford. As their family services specialist Julie Garbett told us, across the country they are seeing "more families, with many more needs". Once, Home-Start's volunteers were a helping hand for families - now, we heard, they feel more like firefighters.

• Home Start UK surveyed its more than 300 centres nationwide for Channel 4 News - of those responding, every one reported a significant increase in the number of families presenting for  support; 
• Birmingham has seen a 70 per cent rise in the number of families coming to Home-Start for help. Other parts of the country also saw a big rise in cases. In Newport in Wales there was a 30 per cent increase. And the figure is around 25 per cent in Doncaster and East Lindsay, in Lincolnshire.

Surge in referrals

We spent time with Anna, Russ and their twin boys, and heard how this once comfortably-off family was left struggling after health issues for the twins, tight finances and depression hit them in quick succession. In an already difficult situation, ongoing struggles for Russ to find and maintain work puts them under more pressure and ill-health means Anna's job at a local primary school is under threat.

The couple have begun selling off some of their possessions to keep afloat. And we met Rebecca, raising her two-year-old son Kieran and running a home on her partner's minimum-wage pay-packet. Her house has very little furniture - almost all of it is donated. Rebecca constantly juggles their budget - making a little go a long way - but when it came to Kieran's birthday this year, finding the money for a trip to a local play center is beyond what they have in the bank account.

As both families told us what life was like, they described a moment when they had gone from being able to juggle their daily demands, to that "tipping point" when they needed help to carry on. As the big problems overwhelm parents, simple daily tasks like getting the weekly shopping becomes too difficult. Once isolated parents don't know where to find the help the need to stop problems escalating. Its is at this point that charities like HomeStart have become a real lifeline, often the only support the family is receiving.

It was clear that concern to give their children the best future possible was a powerful motivator. And the latest research to emerge from the Millennium Cohort Study - a longitudinal research project tracking the lives of around 19,000 british children born in 2000-01 - offers some powerful insights into why these anxious parents are right.

The study looked at families struggling with multiple risk factors - things like worklessness, young parenthood, overcrowded housing and financial stress. Where two or more of those factors are present in a family, there are measurable threats to children's development. The researchers were surprised that the threshold for risk was so low. By their calculations, some 28 per cent of families in Britain are already over that threshold.

"These aren't extreme examples," said Research Director at the Institute of Education Dr Kirstine Hansen. "These are just very normal families. It's a very easy progression from zero risk factors to one, two or more."

Home-Start UK is bracing itself for a further surge in referrals. Already some of its centres are having to close their books or recruit more volunteers. It seems clear that for many more families, that tipping point is a lot closer than they think.

Dr Victoria James is executive producer of the Channel 4 News Film Fund.

Pat Ryan considered race favourite

Our charity, IT4CH, is sponsoring several wonderful runners to run in the London Marathon to raise money for the charity. And look at what they have done to popularise it

Pat Ryan, our wonderful CEO, has been considered to be a race favourite An extraordinary lady indeed.

Creating apps for families in financial distress

As you might know, I am working with Home Start Hillingdon as well as LSE SIFE. I got these two organisations together. Home Start Hillingdon helps families with young children which are in distress. LSE SIFE wants to do something for the community using free enterprise. What better way to do this than to have LSE SIFE to push for improved financial and debt management of our families in need?

So LSE SIFE are working on coming up with a financial education package for our volunteers in HSH which will be deployed soon. In the meantime, I was very impressed and very very happy that these young un’s in LSE have started developing an app for debt management. Now isn't this impressive? Its just early days yet, but I am seriously impressed.

Good for you chaps, very good indeed. If this works out, I am going to try my level best to ensure that LSE SIFE pushes this out nationally if not globally.