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Women's Charity Audit Best Practices Handbook Part 9: Literature Review "It
is justice, not charity, that is wanting in the world." "When
I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor
have no food, they call me a communist." "People
are hungry because they are too poor to buy food. There is a shortage
of purchasing power, not a shortage of food... any discussion of hunger
is incomplete without a discussion of economics." There has been very little written about women's experience of charities, although women and children have been the main recipients of church and social charity programs since the Victorian era. Food banks
and soup kitchens were set up in Canada in the 1980's as a response to
the recession and unemployment. This harkened back to the Depression when
grain silos were opened and people, mostly out of work men, were fed in
soup lines. ( Theresa Funiciello, Tyranny
of Kindness, 2002). While countries such as Canada came out of the recession in the 1990's there was a economic disconnect and contrary to the 'trickle down theory', poverty conditions worsened. In Pay the Rent or Feed the Kids (1999) Mel Hurtig writes: "In April 1997, the National Council of Welfare reported that there were more Canadians living in poverty than during the depths of the last two recessions... Bluntly put, the modest economic growth was simply not filtering down to the ranks of the poor... While the economy has steadily improved since the 1990's, poverty rates have increased, to 17.6% in 1998, and the child poverty rate jumped to 20.9% by 1996... Moreover, while the poverty rate for single mothers under 25 was a terrible 83%, by 1996 it had leaped to 91.3%." (pg. 5) Hurtig also cites economist Shelly Phipps, of Dalhousie University who in 1998 compared children's well-being in Canada, Norway and the U.S: "rates of child poverty are much higher in Canada and particularly in the U.S. than in most affluent countries... Some 18% of young children living with two parents were poor in the U.S. compared to some 13% in Canada and only 5% in Norway. For children living with lone mothers, the rates were an appalling 60% in the U.S., 43% in Canada, and only 16% in Norway." (pg. 14) These economic facts have led to the institutionalization and rapid growth of food banks and soup kitchens. The web site of the Canadian Association of Food Banks states: "Food bank use has more than doubled since the CAFB first conducted the HungerCount in 1989, increasing from 378,000 people in March of 1989 to 778,000 in March of 2003." Around the world governments implement "structural adjustment programs" social spending cuts -- and women and children are the first to be hurt. Business and political leaders push for privatization no matter what the cost to average citizens. Charities are used to justify this process. "Food banks have served to depoliticize the issue of hunger in Canada by undermining governments' legislated obligations to guaranteed adequate welfare benefits and by obviating the need for responsible public action... Food banks allow us to believe that hunger is being solved. Yet this is not so... continued food bank activity essentially depoliticizes the issue of hunger in society by legitimizing it as a matter for charitable concern rather than social justice." (Graham Riches, director of School of Social Work and Family Studies at UBC quoted by Hurtig, pg. 36) In a word, food consumption is treated like just another market activity, an 'individual choice' like shopping for hair colour, even though food is a life or death issue. Treating basic needs as 'market activity' allows those who are privileged to disconnect from those who are not and to hang on to an illusion of individual 'independence' from the human family and from social responsibility. In Tyranny of Kindness, Funiciello examines the hapless and at times sinister relationship U.S. charities can have with business and government. She has extensive experience as a charity client and as a non-profit and government administrator in New York state. In her introduction she states: "Millions of dollars were regularly dispensed in contracts to virtually useless 'non-profit' agencies... poor people were neither receiving the money directly, nor truly influencing how it would be spent." (pg. xviii) Often people's first impulse to poverty is to try to alleviate the immediate crises. In addition, helping people one at a time feels noble and results are immediately apparent. It is much more difficult to address the political and economic roots of poverty through systemic change. However, if charities only address short term symptoms and do not emphasize the need for systemic change, then things can only get worse. Funiciello writes: "The rise of food banks and soup kitchens in the 1980's was part of the nation's eroding commitment to provide an adequate income for all" (pg. 123). Funiciello also details the process by which corporations can donate past due date or spoiled products. She gives the example of Second Harvest, a national not-for-profit corporation in Chicago which is controlled by some of the biggest consumer product manufacturers and distributors in the country: Kellogg's, McDonald's, Monsanto, Procter & Gamble and others. They can donate outdated or spoiled foods to Second Harvest for a $2.10 per pound tax write-off. Second Harvest cannot refuse any of the food and must pay the dumping fee -- formerly the food corporations' responsibility and cost. Corporations are never audited on their 'donations' of garbage, as long as each piece is worth under $5,000. She argues that businesses soon saw these places as "The discard market for products that couldn't be pawned off on the general public..." ( pg.131-2) People then receive for example, packets of meat tenderizer in a hamper with no meat. According to the Canadian Association of Food Banks (CAFB) website, under the National Food Sharing program food is donated by companies in eastern Canada and is then distributed to member food banks across the country. Some of CAFB National Food Sharing partners are Kellogg's, Hershey, Kraft, General Mills, Procter & Gamble, SC Johnson, Bristol-Meyers, Schneiders, etc. (see CAFB Website under Food Supporters). Member food banks must pay a small transporting fee for food that is distributed by CAFB. The CAFB Advisory Committee is made up of these food companies as well as transportation industry professionals. BC's "Food Donor Encouragement Act" implemented 1996, offers protection to charities from being sued for injuries or death from donated food unless food that is rotten, unfit, or adulterated was "intended [emphasis added] to injure or to cause the death of any person who consumed the food or acted in reckless disregard for the safety of others." As neo-liberal cuts take their toll, people who want an equitable society must take an honest look at charities and their role in society. Most people have honourable motives for wanting to help by donating to a charity. Immediate crises do need to be addressed, but at the same time charities and charity donors must be willing to take on systemic change for social justice or they could be perpetuating, not alleviating a problem. In 1968
Paulo Freire wrote about this unflinchingly in Pedagogy
of the Oppressed: A few organizations grapple with the problem of trying to address immediate needs while also working for social justice and long-term strategies and solutions. Some groups in Canada have called for changes to charity law. "The [Revenue Canada] guidelines continue to restrict charities to treating symptons, not seeking solutions." (Oct. 2003, press release) Paul Kivel who works in Oakland, California, writes that social justice organizations must help people "get together" to take power rather than just helping people to "get ahead" one at a time (from his article Social Service or Social Change) The Liberty Hill organization in Los Angeles describes the difference between Change vs. Charity: "Organizing empowers disenfranchised people to collectively change the conditions of their lives and may involve making effective demands on authorities and social institutions. Taken a step further, organizing is an approach to social change that puts individual and personal struggles into a larger political, social and economic context." Any charity can take a wrong turn and end up doing more harm than good. In a thought-provoking email, Sanal Edamruku of the Indian Rationalist Association states "India has no reason to be grateful to Mother Theresa". He argues against the work of this Nobel Prize winner and possible Catholic saint: "Mother Theresa has given a bad name to Calcutta, painting the beautiful, interesting, lively and culturally rich Indian metropolis in the colors of dirt, misery, hopelessness and death... Her order is only one among more than 200...which try to help the slum dwellers...It is locally not very visible or active... But tall claims like the absolutely baseless story of her slum school for 5,000 children have brought enormous...donations... Where did all this money go?... The nuns would hand out some bowls of soup to them and offer shelter and care to some of the sick and suffering... In the overcrowded and primitive little homes, many patients have to share a bed with others. Though there are many suffering from tuberculosis, AIDS and other highly infectious illnesses, hygiene is no concern. The patients are treated with good words and insufficient (sometimes outdated) medicines, applied with old needles, washed in lukewarm water... without pain relief... According to Mother Theresa's bizarre philosophy, it is 'the most beautiful gift for a person that he can participate in the sufferings of Christ', whether the patients agree with her or not." (Oct.21, 2003 on Rad-Green discussion list) Poverty has reached crisis levels in Canada, at the same time as the wealth of the wealthy grows. Jacqui Ackerly of Victoria's Together Against Poverty Society spoke to the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in 1997. "It has been evident to those of us working against poverty that over the last decade our governments-federal, provincial and territorial-have not only quit moving toward full economic rights, but have been dismantling the social safety net." The Canadian government was then censured by the UN which stated: "It is one thing to beat the budget deficit, but not at the expense of bringing about a very harmful, a very inhumane revolution that is taking place now." (Canadian Women's Health Network, Winter, 1998) In 2003 the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women also censured the BC government for their cuts as they had the most dire impacts on the province's women. (See also FAFIA) We at SWAG believe in "Justice, not charity." A Guaranteed Livable Income is gaining ground as a direct solution to poverty in many countries around the world including South Africa and Brazil. (See Appendix 4 for more information) Johnnie Tillmon,
an American woman activist who helped start the National Welfare Rights
Organization stated in an article
in the spring 1972 Ms magazine: But there are also hidden non-monetary costs associated with charity that affect charity users. A project looking at charities undertaken by End Legislated Poverty (a BC-based group) in 1992 stated: "At all of these places the food is ostensibly free - it doesn't cost those who need it any money. But the humiliation of enduring long line ups and religious services in order to eat food of dubious quality has its own costs. Certainly the food is needed, but these places are only a bandaid solution to poverty and fall short of meeting the needs of Vancouver's poor. No one I spoke with at these places really wanted to be there and surely wouldn't be if they could afford to be elsewhere. But when it is a choice between going hungry or going to a soup kitchen, as one person put it, 'what choice do you have?'"(ELP Action Line, June 1992, Steve Turner). In another Action Line article from March 1992, Linda Marcotte and Patricia Chauncey asked "Is time being taken away from organizing for justice and actions that end poverty by working to organize [things like] community kitchens?" They also described how politics was taken out of poverty by individualizing poverty to "make it seem like it's our own fault" which could sound like, "you poor disadvantaged thing, you need help to pull yourself up." "The
Street Speaks" is a 1996 survey by and for low income and homeless
Calgarians about their experience of charity. Their booklet starts with
a quote by Oscar Wilde: "It is said that the poor are grateful for
charity. Some of them are, no doubt. But the best amongst the poor are
not grateful. They are ungrateful. They are ungrateful, and disrespectful,
they are quarrelsome and rebellious. They have every right to be this
way." Many good-hearted people devote money and time to these helping organizations. But Martin Luther King said in his 1968 book Chaos or Community we could choose to end poverty directly instead of indirectly through more services and charites: "In addition to the absence of coordination and sufficiency, the programs of the past all have another common failing -- they are indirect. Each seeks to solve poverty by first solving something else. I am now convinced that the simplest approach will prove to be the most effective -- the solution to poverty is to abolish it directly by a now widely discussed measure: the guaranteed income." Bibliography
B.C. Laws,
statutes,etc. Food
Donor Encouragement Act [SBC 1997] c.8 Canada Custom
& Revenue Agency, Registering a Charity for Income Tax Purposes, 2000. Canadian
Association of Food Banks The Canadian
Book of Charities Clayton,
Stephanie. "First United Pushes SS&H on Welfare Rates".
Edamruku,Sanal,
Indian Rationalists, Rad-Green
List, Oct 21,2003 End Legislated
Poverty. "Waste of a Nation":report, no date.* Ennenberg,
M. "If We Must Have Charity" Freire, Paulo,
Pedagogy of the Oppressed , p.29, np,1968 Funiciello,
Theresa, Tyranny of Kindness, Atlantic Monthly Press, New York, 2002 Housewives
in Training and Research,"It's Time Women Speak Out"1987 * Hurtig, Mel,
Pay the Rent
or Feed the Kids, McClelland and Stewart, Toronto, Ont., 1999 King, Martin
Luther, "Chaos
or Community", 1968 Kivel, Paul,
Social Service or Social Change, www.paulkivel.com,
2000 Liberty Hill,
2000, www.libertyhill.org Loxton, Robin.
"Food Bank Fiasco" Action Line, Issue 9: Oct.1991, p 7 * Marcotte,
Linda & Pat Chauncey. "Community Kitchens..." Smith, Nancy,"Surviving
as a Young Single Mom" "The
Street Speaks, a Homeless Survey by Low Income and Homeless Calgarians",1996
* Turner, Steve.
"People Speak Up On Charities" Turner, Steve.
"Soup Kitchens in Van.:The cost of Free" ActionLine#17:June1992,
p1 * United Nations
Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, 2003 Voluntary Sector Forum Press Release, Oct. 7, 2003 "Call for Change to Lift Restrictions on Advocacy" Next: Appendix
1 - Budget
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