Over half of my donations went to Afghanaid this month (Jan 2009). This arose from my googling a voluntary work colleague of mine who left 2 years back to run a centre supporting female MP’s in Afghanistan. Didn’t find anything current but it reminded me that i had wanted to send something to help that poor benighted country. When the war had been underway only a short time, Radio 4 sent in Emma-Jane Kirby to report. She described visiting a hospital pharmacy. The shelves were completely bare but the pharmacist smiled brightly and asked if now the UK troops had liberated (sic) the country from the Taliban, the poverty of the hospital would be alleviated and his shelves filled?
What is that saying? And said by whom? ‘I can take the despair, it’s the hope i can’t stand’. Think that pharmacist smiles as brightly these days?
So, anyway….within just a few days Afghanaid sent me 2 recent newsletters (to be left on the tube – maybe at the Picadilly/Victoria tube-line interchange), an envelope to enable me to recycle my old mobile (sorry, still using mine but what a great idea), 5 leaflets (i shall distribute somewhere – the halal freezer in Tesco’s seems a good place as any), a thank-you letter detailing how my cash will be spent, a list of ways i can further help the charity, and a freebie envelope (way to this gals heart).
Plus the freebie envelope is a small one, and there was no cellophane window in the despatch envelope. Take a bow Afghanaid, as i couldn’t ask for more.
BTW, how does the WTO support drug addiction? By making it so very hard, impossible in some instances, for underdeveloped countries to compete on the open market against the cost of heavily subsidised goods sold by the west. So you want to earn enough to support your family, you grow something that can outsell the competition…
And you know the best thing about giving to a charity working in Muslim countries – it would annoy the crap out of Bush & Palin & Cheney & Rice…