Christian Charity is.......Charitable....

You'd never catch me dirtying my hands by reading the Mail, and I don't just mean from the newspaper print. However, I follow a lot of people on Twitter who apparently do read it and took to tweeting vehemently against an article they published yesterday on Easter Sunday.

They basically congratulated themselves for sending in an undercover reporter to claim food, from a food bank. STOP PRESS ***CHRISTIAN CHARITY IS........CHARITABLE***

The said reporter got "3 days of groceries...no questions asked" and after filling out a couple of forms was "asked a series of questions about why the food bank vouchers were needed." 

Of course none of us are naive enough to think food banks aren't open to misuse, but it is not on the same scale as claiming disability benefit or unemployment benefit fraudulently, we all have to pay into those benefits via our taxes, so when they are abused we feel we personally have been cheated.  And defrauding those systems results in cold hard moolah, far more appealing than a Fray Bentos pie.

The food banks are run purely on donations from the public, without those donations they simply wouldn't exist, the people who find themselves having to use them will usually have exhausted all other possibilities before walking into a church clutching a voucher, to leave with 3 days worth of preserved goods.

I imagine it was fairly easy for the Mail On Sunday reporter to rock up to the the Citizens Advice Bureau and lie his way into gaining a voucher. 

Now imagine you are a father and husband, you've always provided for your family but now you have lost your job and are struggling to find employment again. Friends and family have been helping you out, sometimes you've asked for it, other times they've just slipped a few notes into your hand to keep you going. Your self esteem has gone through the floor and embarrassment levels are sky high. Your child comes home with a note that requires money for a school trip, the car tax is due and you need to buy food, you have the grand total of £7.64 in your wallet.

The school might help out but you worry about whether it will affect your child if anyone finds out. You avoid taxing the car and hope you can get away with it for another month. You can probably just about buy food for your family for today with that £7.64 and hope that things will change tomorrow. You don't want to stretch out your hand to your own parents for another handout.

Things have been like this for some time now and this is when you arrive at the food bank. Not proud that you've somehow cheated the system and will be claiming your pot noodles for free, but feeling ashamed and embarrassed that somehow it is your fault that you have ended up not being able to feed yourself and your family.

Yes, some people are claiming more than they are entitled to by returning more than the recommended times but who does this affect? The Mail reporter hasn't been obliged to donate from stoppages from his wages, if they don't agree with it, don't donate; it really is that simple.

It is not gourmet food people are claiming, lets be clear here, it is the cheap end of the non-perishable grocery market. It is usually the supermarket's own low end brand of tinned fruit and vegetables, or packet pasta meals. If you are returning to claim this time and again then I would suggest you are a person of need, and that is exactly who the food banks are for, the needy.

And as a big two fingered salute to the Mail On Sunday, the British public response to the article was to donate more! 

Go to Just Giving Crack UK Hunger If you would like to donate to the Trussell Trust to help fight UK hunger. Or maybe think about volunteering at your local food bank.

Christmas Giving

Ah, Christmas.....the annual switching on of the town lights, a new Christmas release at the cinema, the shopping for gifts and food, the collection for the teacher......I'm sorry, what? Yes, the termly collection for the teacher, you know, the one that gets done at Easter and Summer and of course now Christmas.

Now, I'm a bit of a grump when it comes to Christmas, I be-grudge buying gifts for people I don't ever see and haven't a clue what their interests are, which is why gift buying for nieces and nephews stops when they hit 18, tough isn't it? And as for cards what a waste of money and paper they are; while wishing someone you see regularly a 'Merry Christmas', you hand them a card that wishes them a 'Merry Christmas'.  And someone you don't ever see from one year to the next and may probably have even died years ago, you post one to! Why?

But the one thing I really dislike when it comes to Christmas, is the annual email that comes round asking for contributions of a fiver towards a gift for the teacher! Multiply that by a class of 30 and you're looking at £150! Yes, teachers are overworked and underpaid, but aren't most people? Especially the volunteers; in fact the people that run the Brownies/Cubs, toddler groups, Sunday schools, etc. all do it voluntarily, in their own time, for our children and never once have I as a parent been asked to make a contribution towards their Christmas gift!

And as Christmas is about giving, whether it's splashing out ridiculously and going to into the red, because you can't bear to see your child have a tantrum because they didn't get the latest iphone, or inviting family or friends around for Christmas dinner, or giving your Son as the Saviour of mankind to the world, maybe this year if you haven't before, think about giving to someone who isn't expecting it, especially someone who already gives to you by way of volunteering.

And as for the teachers gift? Hand in your homework on time, will probably be the nicest surprise they'll get all year!

Do you have a Christmas collection that gets your goat?

Blessed By The Foodbank

Our town recently opened a foodbank, and when it was in it's planning stages my bff arranged to meet me and I found myself shanghaied and attending the first meeting, it didn't quite turn out to be the coffee date I had imagined, the twenty plus other people who had joined us, all over 50, (I'm being polite) were kind of cramping my style, what on earth had she got me into now? Of course I had heard the requests for volunteers etc at church, but I knew I was way to busy to be able to give my time to that!

Now we are up and running and I am very much on the 'rota' for collecting, boxing, bagging and dating preserved food. (I'm sure I read a blog once that gave tips on getting yourself off a church rota - gonna have to look that one up again.)

The foodbank scheme was established in the UK by the Trussell Trust to help people who face sudden and short term hunger due to benefit change or stoppage, immediate job loss, family break up etc.

I live in a middle class town, with excellent schools and desirable housing, of course there are the streets that you would rather not live in, I mean, some of them don't even have their own driveways, but there aren't pockets of squalor, with the unemployed or homeless hanging around outside the bookies. So I think a fair few people were quite surprised when the need for a food bank was seen, surely not here in the fourth most desirable town in the country to live in? (according to The Times or whichever paper it was did the survey earlier in the year!)

But, we have been running since June, and every week we have fed families, couples, singles, all of whom are overwhelmed by the giving of food, and the release it has given them of the burden of feeding themselves for the next few days, of course there shouldn't be a need in the UK, but there is.  

People are going without food in order to feed their children, missing appointments because they can't afford to get to the hospital, stealing food to avoid starvation, keeping their children off school because of embarrassment of being unable to provide a lunch - all this in 'Great Britain'.

I read a criticism of the foodbanks recently which said "Churches should be offering 'spiritual food'".

Jesus wasn't only 'spiritual' he was practical, he was human, if he saw a need he met it, and as his followers we are to do the same, to 'be Jesus' to those who need it, whatever that need may be. And when the day comes and we stand before him on his throne he will say to us, " whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine you did for me". Matthew 25:40.

Most of the things I've ended up doing at church have sort of just happened accidentally, someone has asked if I'm available or if I fancy doing it, or in the case of my friend and the foodbank, she just told me to turn up! I have to say, I think God has put me in the roles I volunteer in because of this reason, those promptings from other people have led me to take part in things I just wouldn't have considered before, and I know all of it is to bless others, but you know, I really enjoy it, and so it blesses me as well!