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.

k2p Workfare has been around for a lot longer than you state I did it as part of New Deal back in 2000 The name for it changes but its the same thing. (companies running it and finding placements for JSA claimants were Reed and Pelcombe) and this was in an Oxfam shop.

Not harassed but no protective gloves were provided for unpacking/unloading bags of donations some of which contained medical waste.

www.boycottworkfare.org/workfare-its-far-from-over-argos-scope-and-oxfam/

Oxfam
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8 Aug 2016
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Replying to @LaurenAlder @DWP
Hey Lauren, Oxfam has never supported or willingly participated in Workfare or any other government Work Scheme. We

Errrm

"Key features of New Deal
New Deal programmes are targeted at specific groups of people - 18-25 year olds, older long-term unemployed people, lone parents and people with disabilities. Looking specifically at the New Deal for young people, the government has allocated GBP 2.6 billion over five years to 18-25 year olds who have spent at least six months on JSA. The Employment Service has the lead responsibility for implementation of New Deal, yet it aims to deliver the programme through local partnerships, including local authorities, voluntary organisations, Training and Enterprise Councils, colleges and private training providers.

New Deal begins with the "gateway" - a period of up to four months of personalised help designed to: help with job search activity; enhance basic "job-readiness"; direct to unsubsidised jobs; or plan entry to a job, work experience or education and training placements within New Deal. If young people fail to find an unsubsidised job, they are offered a choice of four programme options:

six months of subsided employment plus training;
six months of work experience and training with a voluntary sector organisation;
six months of work experience and training on an Environment Task Force project; or
up to one year on a course of full-time education and training"

The Oxfam prostitute scandal is shocking but can't really come as a big surprise in the current climate of Politician sex scandals, ex football coach scandals, Harvey whats his face and the list really does go on.
In 2012 Sainsbury's supermarket HQ decided to withdraw all support to LOCAL charities by removing hundreds of small charities clothing donation banks from the recycling areas within the car parks. It became and still is Sainsbury's policy to allow OXFAM only within their car parks. Go to any Sainsbury's supermarket in the country and you will ONLY see Oxfam. It's a disgrace that Sainsbury's continues to stand by them to fund this disgusting behaviour whilst small LOCAL charities miss out on vital funds.

I didnt know that.

Also, Ofam and others have been criticized by Kenya and other african countries of basically just dumping second hand clothing which has devastated the local textile industry, so much so that many african countries are now asking for a ban, which Oxfam are not listening to.

I refused to support Oxfam many years ago after seeing how much of donated money was spent on overheads, offices and wages.
I fear that this is just the tip of the iceberg, it won't be Oxfam in isolation, especially as high level executives often move between agencies in the Third Sector.
It's depressing and utterly unforgivable.

As I've said on another post....Overseas postings that get all the benefits of a U.K. based contract (being able to invoke HR processes not available to locally employed personnel) plus the very useful "right to a family life" clause.

This means you can remain in situ in your tropical villa while on maternity or sick leave because you can't disrupt your children's private nursery/ schooling, your working cover comes out on a similar basis and all of this gravy train is funded by the charitable donations from the U.K. all of this time outside of country also gives non residency for tax purposes. There are even further concessions on the rate of NI they pay while out of the country as opposed to other expatriate workers.

The trailing spouse and dependents can access all of the other expensive benefits including the best access to networks that keep cushy locally employed posts within "the circuit"... all the while keeping the moral high ground over anyone there for employment outside of the third sector.

I'm not sure Dexter

Oxfam was complicit in procuring sex amongst those who were in a major natural disaster, comparable to the tsunami of 2004 in terms of the death total.

Going to some parts of Africa, most people wear second-hand donations from Oxfam and the local textile makers and seamstresses are suffering. Its such a shame that local businesses are closing down in Africa because of it. The local clothes are much nicer, anyway.

It always was a smug outfit, right up its own collective backside, and while I am horrified and angry I am not surprised. As ever it is the cover-up which is the killer - you cannot always stop things happening which should not happen but when they do you have the option to acknowledge it and deal with it - or not.

Yes the local clothes are much nicer and generally more hard-wearing. Yet the locals prefer to buy "dead men's clothes". Why do you think that is? Maybe because they're cheaper, leaving more money for other stuff like medical care and school fees. (As an aside, importing western clothes to developing countries is big business now).

You might also reflect that haute couture and saville row tailored suits are nicer than matalan and george by Asda. But people here still choose to wear them despite the fact that they have free access to education and healthcare.

Horrendous not weaving. Really disgustingly horrendous
I was in the super posh one in Durham when a man came in and offered £300 for a clock which they refused to take.

How I kept my mouth shut and didn’t say...well someone won’t be eating tonight then ...I don’t know

I was in the super posh one in Durham when a man came in and offered £300 for a clock which they refused to take

Surely depends on the value of the clock? If it's worth a grand, taking £300 would mean they're not doing their job properly. If it was worth £400, then you negotiate - that's the manager's job. In my experience of big charity shop organisations, lots of the expensive/antique/niche stuff goes online.

You have to remember that the aim of any charity, whatever the size, is to maximise income for their chosen cause. That might mean holding onto valuables until you are sure you get the very best price for them, not sell them to the first person who asks at a knock down price.

These countries have to eventually deal with bed sheets, clothing , old towels etc Initially it might help eventually it will swamp their land fill instead of ours. Nice!

I think it's only clothing which is sent overseas isn't it? I know a lot of stuff which isn't suitable for resale is sold for shredding and ends up as stuffing in sofas/mattresses/cushions etc.

One of the Oxfam/Haiti culprits who resigned walked straight into a new job at CAFOD...

I think when you're the size of Oxfam and utilising lots of local as well as foreign workers, you're eventually going to find a few bad apples.
It's how you deal with them that's important.

Apparently Oxfam was one of the good guys when it comes to dealing with this behaviour. It is sad that they are getting the most flack. But the bottom line is no one should tolerate this behaviour and if it is Oxfam who suffer then at least the sex/prostitution is getting lots of publicity because of that, which it wouldn't have had it been some small local charity.

Well I did my shift yesterday as usual and there didn't appear to be any effect on the number of people coming through our door.

Most customers didn't mention Haiti at all. The two or three who did were of the "few bad apples in any organisation" opinion.

And we had home made cake in the kitchen for tea break which was lovely.

www.bbc.com/news/uk-43101434

Brendan Cox has resigned.

It's just sad that this does not surprise me.

Wealthy, entitled white guys taking advantage of poor young black women? Oldest trick in the book.

Beanteam I think I listened to the the same r4 show.

They said that Oxfam isn't the worst, but all workers are on short term contracts. Very hard to hear.

Male predatory behavior really is distressing.

I don't believe that you can buy consent.

This kind of minimising from the Oxfam boss really doesn't help - he should go:
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/02/16/oxfam-boss-baffled-ferocious-criticism-claiming-critics-gunning/

No, Oxfam employees did not murder babies but they did sexually exploit/abuse young women adn perhaps offer aid for sex. His comment smacks of the same kind of rationalisation that allowed other grandiose institutions such as the Catholic church, CofE, BBC etc to dismiss sexual abuse claims over the years (different era, acceptable at the time type attitude) and just move the prepatrators on elsewhere.