Begging for an answer

What do you tell your children about beggars?

I assume that most people have an attitude much like mine; that giving through registered charities is preferable to giving directly to the man or woman with the begging bowl on the street.  That way we can be fairly sure that the money is put to good use rather than spent on drugs, alcohol, or passed onto some Fagin-type character who controls gangs of unfortunates.  So unless the person with their hand out is offering you a Big Issue (which I guess doesn't really count as 'begging' per se, since you are given something in return), I tend to avoid them.  Walk straight past them.  Essentially, ignore them.

Sounds ugly when you put it like that, doesn't it?

Does to me, anyway.

I remember the first time I saw a beggar - as if it were yesterday.  I was 17, on a school trip to Rome, walking with my friends along a hot and dusty street, dipping in and out of the shade offered by the shop awnings and suddenly, there she was.  A dark-haired child, wearing what looked like vaguely ethnic clothes, messy and unkempt, head down, standing in front of a corner store.

Holding her hand out.

I was shocked.  I came from middle England, from a small town in the Cotwsolds.  Any holidays abroad (and there hadn't been that many in my life until that point) were always controlled by my parents and no doubt they had taken care to avoid such meetings before.  This really was outside my experience.  Surely this couldn't be happening?  Not in Italy?  Italy was part of Europe, surely there weren't beggars in Europe.  (Ah, sweet innocence of youth).  I gave her money - I can't remember how much but since I didn't have a lot myself, it will only have been a few coins - and walked on, wondering how a child ends up in a situation like that.  I wonder now what happened to her.

Let's fast-forward nearly 30 years.  I have a son of nearly the same age as the girl I saw in Rome.  Sadly, he didn't have to wait until he was 17 to see his first beggar; I suspect that he wouldn't be able to tell you when that happened since begging now happens everywhere, even in the middle-London/middle-England we inhabited before moving to Moscow.

And in Moscow, there are definitely beggars.  They wait by the cathedrals, by the church we go to on a Sunday, in supermarket carparks, in the metro.  Unless you remain cocooned in your big 4x4 never looking out of the darkened windows, you can't avoid them.  Most disturbingly, more than 50% of them have young children or babies with them.  How can you turn away from and ignore a young woman pulling a 2 year old by the hand in a wet & windy supermarket carpark, as you cram your week's worth of shopping into the boot of the car?  How can you step over the woman with the baby waiting by the gate outside Mass on a Sunday morning?  What about the elderly lady kneeling and praying by the cathedal, the guy with no legs in the wheelchair waiting by the traffic lights, or the pensioner steering her blind husband through the crush on the metro asking for your help because their state pension isn't enough?

Can you give to all of them?

Of course you can't.  So often, you end up giving to none of them.

As an adult I try to justify this in my head by counting up the hours spent proof-reading and editing documents and brochures for charities, by the money collected and donated to those same organisations, by the awareness I try to spread within the expat community here of the need for their time and money.

But my sons don't see that.  And since they don't come shopping with me, they don't see the apple or banana I hand to the 2 year old outside the supermarket as his mother (if she is his mother) pockets the dollar I just gave her and - more often than not - tells me that's not enough.

I know hand-outs are not the answer.  Give the man (or woman) a fishing rod, not a single fish; that's what we're supposed to do.  Deal with the root causes of poverty, not just the symptoms.  But I want to teach my children not to be hard-hearted and turn away from those in need.  Giving to those who require help now, today, to make it through to tomorrow, does not make them a soft touch, a mug, an easy prospect; it simply makes them human.

So.  I would really like to know.  What do you tell your children about beggars?

How did you get to the hospital to give birth? Join the March for Mothers...

If you're a mother reading this post, I have a question for you.

When you went to the hospital to give birth (assuming that you did go to the hospital to give birth, and if you didn't - respect. You're a braver woman than I am), how did you get there?

I suspect you were driven. Of course, you may live round the corner from the hospital, and have walked (which was my plan until the contractions kicked in and I was revealed for the wimp I am...), but I think it's more likely your journey was not on foot.

You may have been sitting in the passenger seat of your car with your teeth clenched and your eyes tight shut as you were driven over what seemed like mountainous bumps in the road. You may have been on all fours on the back seat, mooing like a cow (not me, oh no. But I know someone who did...). Your trip may have involved a helter-skelter race through a town in darkness, a police escort, and have finished with you giving birth on a police officer's coat in the hospital car park (yes, a true story - but not mine). Or it may have started with you skulking around a corner whilst your partner hailed an unsuspecting black cab who would otherwise no-way no-how have stopped for a wild-eyed heavily pregnant woman carrying a small suitcase at 2am (OK, that one was me).

Whatever it was, I'm guessing that for most of us, 4 wheels were involved.

For millions of women across the world, however, a long walk is necessary to get any help or medical assistance during pregnancy and childbirth. So on March 17th, the day before Mother's Day, Health Poverty Action are running the 'March for Mothers' sponsored walks in Greenwich Park, London, to highlight the plight of the 340,000 mothers a year who die in pregnancy and childbirth each year and to help raise funds to support them and to reduce this shocking number.

The march is for the whole family, and features walks of both 5 and 10km. Click here to find out more and how to enter.

(This was not a sponsored post...)

Help wanted...

I should be proof-reading, tidying up, checking what we're going to have for dinner tonight, or editing photographs, but I'm not. This post has been metaphorically burning a hole in my pocket since Friday, and until I write it I can't properly focus on anything else.

This is Sergey*.

I met him and his mother when I was at a riding centre for the disabled in Moscow. He has, amongst other things; cerebral palsy, bilateral spastic diplegia, and a very rare chromosomal disease. It's the last that is the real problem and as a result of it, he's slowly fading away. There seems to be no help available to him here in Russia, and his mother is desperate. Desperate enough to approach a complete stranger with no medical knowledge or expertise, who doesn't even speak the same language, to ask if there is any way I could help. She wasn't looking for money (specifically), but instead for any information she can find on where to turn for assistance in treating Sergey's condition outside Russia.

Since I had a Russian friend me with me, we were able to exchange email addresses and she has sent me a translation of his medical diagnosis.

Now. I know that there are millions upon millions of children out there who need help. I know that Sergey is just one amongst them, and that they should all have a shot. I'm told by others who are more experienced than I am at dealing with charities that it's possible to tie yourself up in knots over one child, when in fact you should keep the bigger picture in mind.

I know all that.

But I've met this little boy, and his mother. I've seen first-hand his condition and smiled with him as he was helped to ride a pony and undergo therapy which - whilst it can't cure his condition - can at least ease some of the symptoms. And I can't forget the quiet desperation in his mother's voice as she repeated for what must be the thousandth time the details of his diagnosis to yet another complete stranger who might - somehow - be able to help.

So I'm trying, via friends in the medical profession back home, to see if there is anyone I can put her in touch with, and since I have this blog, I'm trying here too.

Please, if you know of anyone who may have contacts in the area of treating chromosomal diseases, ask them to get in touch with me via the email listed on the 'contact me' page of this blog and once I've checked out their credentials I will forward them Sergey's translated diagnosis and put them in touch with his mother.

Thanks for reading.

*Not his real name

Co-operation- and how it can work

This is a sponsored post...

Here's something I can bet you didn't know about me; my dad grew up living above a Cooperative shop in a small Northern town, which his father managed and which provided a community hub for the locals when supermarkets as we know them today were the stuff of fantasy or tales brought back from across the Atlantic by tourists. I don't know this for certain but I imagine grandad knew all his customers by name - because, back then, that's how things worked in small towns - and that he exchanged pleasantries with them whilst carving them the requisite slices of ham or slicing them the right weight of crumbly Wensleydale.

Dad left that small Northern town more years ago than he might care to think about, but my grandparents stayed on and some of my earliest memories are of visiting that flat with it's icy concrete steps in winter, feeling the heat from the bars of the electric fire burn my chilblains, and huddling under nylon-topped quilts, sheets and blankets... (Why is it always cold up North in my memories, I wonder?)

Since then, the Cooperative has become more than a store and a savings scheme (remember the stamps?); it's now also a mainstream bank that punches above it's weight not only in terms of customers but in terms of ethical codes of practice, holding true to it's name and remaining a body run for the benefit of all it's members than just for a small handful of share-holders.

I was particularly interested to learn about their initiative The Cooperative Community Fund. This is a charitable foundation which receives donations from a group of public-spirited members who chose to give a percentage of their twice yearly share of profits to be used for the benefit of the larger community in their area. This year's total was £1.2 million and is to be allocated within the geographical area that money is received from.

Projects are allocated by postcode, and grants vary from a minimum of £100 to £2000. That may not seem a lot in today's world of high finance and telephone number mortgages, but even that much can make a positive difference if spent wisely.

Why was I asked to write about this? Because they are looking for applicants. I was tasked with thinking about an example; something that money could be spent on in my local area that would have a positive long-term benefit on the community (note: a group does not need to have charitable status to apply for one of these grants), will address a local issue, support co-operative values and principles, and ideally be innovative in it's approach.

Hmmm. I live in Russia, remember. 'Co-operative' is not a word that get's bandied around very often here; it smacks too much of pre-1991 and communism. 'Every man for himself' is more like it, if I'm honest. You only have to travel on the metro in rush-hour to see that. Unless of course you're talking about in a family environment, where everything is shared equally and one person's trouble is the problem of all. The problems arise, however, when a person has no family, for whatever reason that might be. I've recently become involved with - in a very minor way - a charity that helps with that, giving orphaned children not a home or care, because that is already - to a point - provided by the state, but which helps to give them the tools to deal with the outside world once the umbrella organisation looking after them moves them out of their institutions into a semblance of every-day life.

Now unfortunately, £2000 isn't going to provide much tuition for these children (teachers need to be paid, overheads need to be funded), but what it could do is provide them with some interactive tools to help them practice budgeting - even in gaming form, for example - and which might simulate some of the real-world decisions they could be called upon to make once they leave their 'home'. I read recently about a new computer game which simulates the effects on the world of certain environmental policies; make the wrong one, for instance, and India is flooded or Spain becomes a waste-land. I'm not a gamer, but I'm sure there must be similar games out there which do the same job but with real life situations.

And whilst it may not seem like a very worthy way of spending this type of grant, anything that could stop the young people I'm writing of being persuaded to swap their government-funded flat for a new wii, for example (and this does happen), and then finding themselves homeless as a result because they had no proper understanding of the ramifications of their decision, can't help but have a positive effect on the local environment, surely?

Cooperative Membership Fund

Click here to find out more about the application process to qualify for one of The Cooperative Community Fund Grants

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Help Wanted...

It seems like I'm shouting a lot about charitable causes these days. I'm not going to apologise for that, but I do understand that 'charity fatigue' is real and that we all experience it from time to time.

However, here's a short film from Unicef about Pakistan that I was forwarded today and I think is worth watching. (And I do think it's amusing that they sent me this one, what with it's featuring the quite watchable Ewan McGregor and all. What am I - an easily pigeon-holed Mummy Blogger or something?)