To be absolutely disgusted about the OXFAM revelations?

[yolofish]

Forgive me if there is already another thread but I couldnt find one...

So Haiti: devastated by an earthquake. Head honchos come in - and they host a party in which young Haitian girls appeared wearing nothing but Oxfam tshirts - literally nothing else, according to today's Sunday Times.

Oxfam does amazing work of course. but gets £32m of tax payers' money year in year out - and this happened 7 years ago.

I am truly disgusted by these events.

LanaKanesTerfyVagina the good news in men having revealed themselves to be so awful is that now I feel inherently superior to all of them ;)

How fucking special and privileged must these guys believe themselves to be? pursuing careers helping vulnerable people in need, all the while exploiting vulnerable people in need.

Hideous.

It's disgusting and abhorrent that these so called Aid workers are nothing more than sex tourists enjoying the benefits of free flights and accommodation to their land of sex.

It's also highly embarrassing that these poor women and children have been abused and exploited by these men who are supposed to be responsible for saving them, on our donations.

Major safeguarding concerns including in the shops have been raised and not acted on for quite some time according to Sky News at the moment. How on earth does a charity get to be the size of OXFAM and allow/have allowed all this to happen??

I recommend people watch The Whistleblower, currently on Netflix.

www.imdb.com/title/tt0896872/

This is a national disgrace and should be brought before an inquiry but I had to laugh when I heard that Jacob Rees Mogg was getting his fingers in this pie in that his argument was that foreign aid is madness. He really does miss the point spectacularly.

I work for a charity which thankfully is in the extremely lucky position of being self funding and not having to ask for government money or even much in the way of donations, and our safeguarding procedures are really very good. The CEO of our charity has made a comment in a charity trade publication that there was work being done last year with the charities commission around the Olive Cooke case and Kids Company to ensure that charities adopted good values in all areas of their operations, but that "vested interests" had their noses put out of joint so it got shelved...
I really think that this could be Oxfam's Kids Company moment unless they do a really thorough house cleaning, and become very transparent about their policies and procedures.
Having worked in the charity sector for a while now I have taken the steps of only donating to charities where I know my donation will be used well. I don't think I've ever donated to Oxfam and I don't think I will now. I certainly don't think they meet the standards to attract public money, and my personal view is that if we have to have a 0.7% of GDP aid budget, it should go into a managed fund that is used for specific projects and crises, and can also be used for disasters at home such as serious flooding or grenfell. That is effectively how the charity I work for has accumulated its money- it received some bequests a long time ago such as buildings in central london and has very cleverly invested and managed its money ever since.

I wonder how many of them were on workfare

I have been volunteering in a large, busy Oxfam shop for two years and we have not had one volunteer in that time who was there as part of a Job Centre scheme. Yes we have some volunteers who are claiming benefits for all number or reasons but none who are there because they have to be.

This "revelation" from the Mail about abuse being "rife" in shops in just nonsense. 123 cases over 9 years. Agree that it's 123 too many. But 123 over 9 years, over 650 shops, over 23,000 plus volunteers is not "rife".

It's certainly not something I identify with AT ALL, in fact, out of all the places I've ever worked, Oxfam has by far been the nicest, most accepting, most accommodating of people with different needs, most respectful and most tolerant. There is a very clear safeguarding policy for all young people and vulnerable adults who volunteer in store and all volunteers should be aware of it. Paid staff are all DBS checked.

Sexual harrassment in any workplace is wrong. So let's not pretend Oxfam shops in the UK are some sort of hotbed of abuse because they're not.

Well I beg to differ because they obviously have trouble within the voluntary sector. You obviously agree that 123 is 123 too many. Are you dismissing this?

I would be concerned as a volunteer that 123 was the tip of the iceberg to be honest.

but none who are there because they have to be.

Many young people have to volunteer in order to get a work profile.

I just hope our government continues its fight for justice for vulnerable women. I assume it will now work to eradicate the use of prostitutes by:

• our troops
• UN peace keepers

-the staff of big multinational corporations whose business interests they promote

yes elendon, volunteering is actively promoted for 6th formers for their uni apps etc and also as a step to getting a paid job.

square Oxfam's Kids company moment: I feel you could be right.

Interesting speech on the world at one on radio 4 today at 10 mins in. It is Madeleine Rees of Internetional League for Women. Also the following interviewee is interesting - apparently Oxfam is one of the better charities!

Would be interesting to see what figures of reported harrassment there are in other organisations of a similar size, over 23,000 employees/volunteers.

I'm not defending anything, in two years with the organisation I have seen/heard nothing to defend. It's a respectful and very friendly place in my experience, lots of people at all stages of their lives and from different backgrounds. In our area, 80% or more of managers are women. It is not an organisation which is encouraging men to abuse women, however hard the Mail tries to make out that it is.

Nobody has to volunteer. Nobody who chooses to volunteer has to do it in a charity shop. Nobody who even chooses to volunteer in a charity shop has to choose any one particular charity.

The last thing you want in any organisation relying on volunteer goodwill is a sulky teenager there because their mum says they have to be. I have kids of an age to be doing voluntary work for DofE and so on and and hardly any are in shops - they are having cups of tea with residents in the local care home, helping at cubs/brownies or assisting at sports clubs.

Nobody has to volunteer
The jobcentre forces people on workfare to 'volunteer' or lose their benefit

I was caught up in a major disaster last year and still live in the place where it happened (which is still a disaster zone really: nearly 6 months on I still don't have electricity at home)

It totally changed my view of how they should be handled/funded.

The 'big' charities were first in: they came on swanky jets when people here were trying desperately to get out and couldn't; they got lent fancy cars when most of ours were crushed and they bagged nice villas to stay in when most of us had no roofs. They drove around eating fresh fruit and drinking bottled water, which we
couldn't get, and jumped the 3 hour fuel queues to gas up their SUVs. They drove around gawping at us and taking pictures for a few weeks then buggered of again in their jets without doing anything appreciably useful.

In contrast, the ones who are still here I've never heard of before. They are clearing rubble from schools by hand and camping. They're amazing.

The best charities to support here have been tiny and local and don't pay anyone, but are out there fixing houses and clearing debris and doing practical work.

The best thing to send is cash to locals if possible. Sending things was well meaning but useless: they didn't get here for months or were things like clothes that we didn't really need. Money would have helped our local economy. A lot of aid was stolen
And never reached anyone.

My family gives money to charity AND sends cash to locals. We have family and friends in troubled countries, so we try to help on a regular basis.

We can only do it because we recognise that giving to family and friends overseas is like giving money to family and friends in the UK: sometimes you'll agree with what they spend it on, sometimes you won't.

We just accept that, even within the family, there won't be a 100% hit rate.

So I don't demand 100% effectiveness rate for charities either. But I do try to keep an eye on efficiency and actual harm.

So innocent until proven guilty only works when you are not male and not accused let alone charged with a "sexual assault".

Cdtaylor: there are different levels of proof for different things though. In a court of law, one expects proof beyond reasonable doubt and that is a very very high level. For an international organization that works with very vulnerable people however the level of proof needed should be lower, and in addition things that aren't necessarily illegal (or not a police priority) should be lower. However, I also think it's possible that Oxfam is one of the better ones. They did apparently act on hearing the allegations and remove the people from their jobs. They acted with a lack of transparency however in downplaying what had happened to the charity commission and that seems to be the main criticism against them. This was very wrong - but I hope the take home message for other NGOs is that it was wrong to downplay what had happened when it was reported and NOT that it was a mistake not to do a better job covering it up (if they had hushed it up entirely and everyone kept their jobs etc then we wouldn't know about it at all and wouldn't be discussing it)

I used to donate monthly to Oxfam. It started off as £4 a month and the glossy leaflets came through my door on a regular basis asking me to up it to £8 a month. I did so. Then the leaflets kept coming asking me to up it to £12 a month! I was on a low wage at the time and even £8 a month was stretching it. The letters kept getting bigger and glossier until I started to wonder if all my money was been spent on letters asking me for more money

At that point I cancelled my DD. I only give to smaller charities now. Big charities are just a business. I used to work for Centrepoint and they aren't the caring, whisking young people off the street charity they like to make out either.

I suspect this is the tip of a depressing bloody iceberg.

And people will stop giving to large charities, even better run ones, as a result.

And people will stop giving to large charities, even better run ones, as a result.

I think people will be a bit more wary of large charities, but I think this has been needed for a while now.

Its funny that some people are still trying to paint this as a right wing smear whilst Corbyn being so partisan has decided to attack the government without criticizing oxfam despite the deep ties between labour and oxfam.

Disgusted but not at all surprised.

The best thing Oxfam can do now is to shut up shop and reinvent itself with a new name.

The name 'Oxfam' is tainted. It barely recovered from the last scandal where we found out about the six figure salaries of the bosses.

The name 'Oxfam' is tainted. It barely recovered from the last scandal where we found out about the six figure salaries of the bosses

Well that was hardly a secret, was it?