If so I would be interested.

Anti-poverty charities in the UK are pledging their support and driving campaigns to alleviate poverty in the UK and abroad. But are these organisations so engrossed in their own discourses that they do not notice the impact of their own actions? Or is it more the case that they are just a reflection of their middle-class philanthropic roots and failing to grasp or follow up on their logic consistently into the very heart of the rationale of their organisation?

The growing number of people out of work and the marginalisation of the long term unemployed are hitting an all time high at the depth of the recession.

The recent review of the Welfare reform which came to the Grand Committee stage at the House of Lords early June this year, is tightening around the poor, advocating ‘welfare for work’ and pushing many of these already disadvantaged groups to take on responsibility for their poverty. Lone parents with young children are being pressured back to seeking employment and juggling a pressured life between their children’s needs and working conditions likely to introduce their to a new ‘level’ of poverty on low income as very few are likely to attain the kind of sustained higher level professional employment that would give them a real chance to break out of the poverty trap.

Given all this, there is ONE obvious pressing issue. Jobs are needed. The availability of paid employment is essential. Equal opportunities of access pathways to work are essential for those more likely to be marginalised and falling into the claws of the poverty trap.

Yet, the ‘volunteering sections’ of large charitable organisations are swelling up with more and more sophisticated ‘volunteer and internships opportunities’ to provide the resources that pledge their services to the disadvantaged. The opportunities have become elaborate job descriptions and person specifications. They are in fact fully fledged employment opportunities that are being diverted as training ground around the middle-classes. Check for example, Oxfam latest volunteering opportunities: http://www.oxfam.org.uk/get_involved/volunteer/latest.html#ocl . Oxfam is not unique. This is a growing trend, to the point that in July, Jim Knight

This is where the roots and the fundamental flaws of 21st century philanthropy come to light. They carry the contradiction of polarisation between the ‘better off’ and the ‘vulnerable and poor’ at the very core of their own practice. Why?

Their volunteering and internship opportunities are only available to either students (more than likely from middle-class backgrounds) or those who can afford to give this time because they have other means that enables them not to fall pray to the stringent rules of the welfare state and welfare benefits.

Under current welfare law, only students who have just completed their degree in the previous year are entitled to claim benefit (turned into a ‘training grant’) while undertaking an internship. Other unemployed claimants on income-based job seekers allowance are NOT entitled to benefit when they undertake an internship or take on any substantial volunteering role that is considered to contradict the terms of their entitlement to benefits, namely their expected availability to seek work and for work 40 hours a week. They are, therefore, excluded from these opportunities. These people are the very people the charities are seeking to support in their pledge to alleviate poverty. Yet, their practice on their home ground doesn’t open up the very basic empowering equal opportunity to engage in work or opportunities for pathways to work for the people they stand to advocate. And there is no point to just simply blame government policy for this flaw. Our actions and integrity starts at home. They should stand and take appropriate action to defend employment and overt training opportunities based on equal opportunity in its full ‘human rights’ meaning at the heart of their organisation because it matters, because there is poverty in the UK, they know it all too well. Consistency is the key to credibility.

What was that UB40 single: “1 in 10″? – admittedly, referring to the unemployed and not including the “economically inactive”.

It’s always fascinated me, the term, “economically inactive”. It sounds remarkably like scrounger, don’t you think?

War veteran – economically inactive
Widow – economically inactive
Disabled – economically inactive
Convict – economically inactive…

Given the years and millions we have spent on social inclusion, which became cohesion, and then whichever euphemismistic spin would detract from the decades of comprehensive denial that we needed to tackle the fundamental flaws in our welfare state, you’d have thought that perhaps, somewhere along the line, “economicaly inactive” might have been discarded by now.

When, oh, when are we going to accept that the vast majority of us do not live in an “us and them” society? But for a miniscule shift in circumstances, invariably brought on by another’s risk-taking, most of us are a stone’s throw from being “them”. People of my age (44 pending) need only look to their pensions to see that!

Perhaps, oh I pray, after we’ve been to the polls next year, we’ll live in more than a bipartisan state, for surely, after all the expenses furore and uncontrollable bankers’ excesses, the field must be so wide open?