Action Aid - no such thing as a biological female

I'm a trustee of a small charity called the Mvumi Trust raising bursaries for girls and visually impaired children to attend school in rural Tanzania (and incidentally one of the only schools in the region to educate children with and without disabilities together, with huge positive impact on the acceptance of visually impaired kids, many of whom have albinism).

We definitely know which ones are girls - we have to raise 30% more money for girls' bursaries compared to boys, because we need to pay families money to allow their girls to go to school and the girls do better when they board as otherwise they are made to stay at home and miss school to help out with housework, and also when they are on their periods.

I would recommend looking for small kitchen table charities like ours who don't have professionals on staff to raise money or run the organisation. We are all just volunteers and beholden to nobody but our kids, our donors, our consciences and the charities commission, though I'd love to be beholden to FWR readers who would like to sponsor girls to go to school!

Samaritan's Purse. The one thing you are truly not allowed to discuss freely on MN. Nasty business that. They make Mermaids almost look friendly and reasonable.

shudders

thank you for answering everyone.i knew there was one there was one as I remembered the alternate Xmas box suggestions thread I just wasn't quite sure which one it was...

Samaritan's Purse is the grim conversion thing. I kicked up a fuss when that went anywhere near my child's school. Awful.

CA don't proselytise at all. Having said that, @wrongsideofhistorymyarse doesn't sound impressed. One of the things that really made me blink about Action Aid, actually, was the way an allegedly feminist charity focused on women and girls had such a male senior leadership team. And her experiences sound worrying - I've known a lot of people who worked for charities describe really toxic cultures, in fact. It's disheartening.

I think I've seen enough. There are excellent and targeted charities mentioned in this thread, and the other. Plenty of worthy causes that don't raise so many question marks.

The girls that we sponsor all get sanitary packs so they don't miss school as the lady in charge of the education programme realised they were missing school due to not having sanitary products. We employ local people and pay them a good wage. To stay in the programme pupils they have to pass all their exams, however at the AGM we were asked if we could keep one of the girls on even though she had failed as she was at great risk of early forced marriage, if course the answer was yes.

The other part of the charity builds stoves, helps grow trees to stop deforestation and provides Wells for villages. All of which impact on womens lives.

(I'm only a supporter, and a sponsor BTW)

But i'm sorry to say, it doesn't restore my faith in the overall ethos.

I am beginning to think this is the biggest intentional psychological warfare campaign / psy op ever perpetrated, and frankly alongside my confusion, and mounting anger, a frisson of genuine, gut wrenching fear is brewing.

Yes. And if you can make people believe/parrot the biggest, most basic and most ridiculous untruth - that men can be women and women can be men - all other lies will be a doddle to push after that.

There is something huge and rotten at the core of all of this.

The only instance I can think of girls 'identifying as boys' is in Afghanistan but unsuprisingly that ends when reality bites.

Also sworn virgins in Albania.

But both phenomena driven by the same thing - societal misogyny.

(Whereas I think "third sexes" involving biological men are on the whole driven by societal homophobia.)

Wow thats great research Red Tooth Brush very scary indeed. The more I hear of these charities and NGOs the more I lose faith and I agree a full investiation needs to be had.

The only instance I can think of girls 'identifying as boys' is in Afghanistan but unsuprisingly that ends when reality bites.

I feel much like you @OldQueen1969 I don't know what we can do. I'm so glad there are tenacious, fearless women fighting this fight. Fortunately for me in real life the people I interact with are asking the obvious questions too.

CA don't proselytise, which is a point in their favour.

So what do they call the type of human who has the body parts previously associated with being female? There has to be a word for that. Or are we just going to pretend that we don’t need one?

Was it Christian aid that made up all those boxes for kids then stuck all the religious leaflet in or was that another charity?

Re Christian Aid in a nutshell:

• poor decision making processes and measurements of results
• all white senior management despite diverse workforce
• almost exclusively male senior management
• intolerance and outright bullying to my entire team

It's the only place I've ever not worked my notice. My team were great (we won awards FFS) but bullied my senior management. A senior manager called me a liar.

This was nearly a decade ago and I hope the culture has changed. But it was vile.

Bloody hell.
I thought their initial statement was bad enough, but RTB investigation actually makes it so much worse. They have an advert on Facebook at the moment with James Purefoy making a heartfelt appeal with accompanying photos of 'disadvantaged children' - such a cynical ploy as it seems a hefty wedge of their money is going on political lobbying in the UK! Talk about disingenuous.

So based on one member of the public complaining, they have decided that biological sex doesn't exist and is therefore irrelevant when thinking about issues that affect women and girls, one of their major charitable focuses.

FFS

Happy to have a PM instead if that is easier for you. I appreciate these things can be sensitive.

We used to have a very low income a few years ago and it's only relatively recently that we're better off, and able to donate to the causes we believe in each month. I'm not keen on any of those donations, however modest, to be wasted.

I used to work at Christian Aid and they'll never see a penny from me.

@RedToothBrush thank you for a phenomenal bit of research, and a very clear breakdown. Even I can understand. I'll stay with my local donations from now on.

Follow the money, indeed. Blimey.

The Charities (Protection and Social Investment) Act 2016 was brought in to require charities to stop targeting vulnerable people or placing anyone under undue pressure to donate.

I think this was a result of some pretty awful examples in the past.

Largely ordinary people, often women, and usually elderly.

The arm twisting and emotional blackmail was pervasive.

In fact, didn't a woman kill herself a few years ago because so many charities ramped up the pressure for her to increase her direct debit?

Here's a cracking example of how the charity commissions front page for each charity and their spending doesn't work.

This is Save the Children.
apps.charitycommission.gov.uk/Showcharity/RegisterOfCharities/CharityWithPartB.aspx?RegisteredCharityNumber=1076822&SubsidiaryNumber=0

They have over 17,000 employs and yet the charities commission website says they spend 100% of the expenditure on charitable causes.

This is pretty baffling especially when you consider that it's accounts state the wage bill was over $360,000,000. (Yes I have the currency correct. That's how it appears on their accounts submitted to the charity commission).

Meanwhile Oxfams annual report talks about "Gender Justice and Women's Rights". Now I'm not quite sure why gender is being conflated with sex when that seems to be what they are talking about or whether gender justice is something entirely different to simple old fashioned women's rights.

This appears to be Oxfam (GB) and from the annual report I can't tell how this relates to Oxfam International (separate organisation from what I can tell). Or if whether the sections for humanitarian spending and development spending are set up in the same way as Actionaid to filter up to the parent organisation. It just isn't clear to me.

I'd really like this to be a hell of a lot easier to understand and for there to be standardised account reporting to the charity commission to be a legal requirement, which has much better and more defined terms of types of spending rather than accountants just being able to make this shit up and seemingly trying to hide stuff from potential donors.

Quite why the charities commission just are letting this shit pass is quite beyond me.