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.

The whole thing stinks but doesn't surprise me.

I work for a charity - in a lowly admin role. It's a local charity and after seeing firsthand how money is spent poorly, on things that aren't necessary, I wouldn't ever donate to a charity again.

Wealthy, entitled white guys

I think the some of the abusers in Haiti were local.

Just dipping in and out of the thread but reading this comment from an oxfam worker "And we had home made cake in the kitchen for tea break which was lovely." seems utterly crass. So poor women and girls sexually exploited overseas but as long as there's cake right?

Is there some context I have missed?

Just re-read the original thread and as well as what everyone else has said, am also very angry that tax payers money goes to support this kind of atrocity. You used my money for that?

I've never supported a charity that spends so much of donations on administration and wages. We support small and local charities, and I support a few dog specific breed ones that I know have helped family/friends. It's beyond disgusting, but sadly I think it will be the tip of a very large iceberg once the truth starts to come out..........

You can look up how many pence in the £ go to help on the ground which I did when choosing who to support

However maybe "help on the ground" includes generously paying impoverished girls for sex.

it just gets worse and worse... I know NAMALT but I am really honestly beginning to think that Most are, or perhaps would be given the opportunity. Fucking disgusting.

Sorry if it's been a mentioned but has anyone seems the film whistle blower with Rachel weiss... About bosnia and Kosovo the un army actively shipped women in to abuse?

When I saw that I just thought this won't be the only case going on.

The most profilific pedophile our country has ever known was working in third world county with some sort of charity.

Just dipping in and out of the thread but reading this comment from an oxfam worker "And we had home made cake in the kitchen for tea break which was lovely." seems utterly crass. So poor women and girls sexually exploited overseas but as long as there's cake right?

VOLUNTEER. VOLUNTEER. Unpaid. All Oxfam VOLUNTEERS have taken a right kicking this week over things which they had no control over. We had a customer making snidey comments to the young woman in our shop who has obvious learning difficulties and taking pleasure in watching her try to counter his remarks.

We have a choice - we can as VOLUNTEERS sit around gnashing our teeth and wailing and bemoaning the state of affairs or we can support each other with tea and cake. I'm out of this thread now as it's clear that most posters are firmly of the belief that charity workers and volunteers are just in it for access to abuse women. Total bollocks but think what you want.

I hope you stepped in and told him to f off rather than allow him to abuse this poor girl? I would have frog matched him out!

The revelations today from one of the girls he had sex with is quite telling. She obviously thought he was a pretty kind nice man - he wanted sex just after her baby was born so she put him off for a month and he sent round nappies etc. Then she did go over and she knew she would be one of several women on the go at once. It is the imbalance of power thing all over again like senior men with junior women at work. These men should not be exploiting their power, even if those local women thought it was quite a good deal it wasn't. It was a really bad example. He could have masturbated or taken up knitting or got a wife but instead he did this. What was he thinking?

I hope you asked him to leave the shop k2

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.

So were customers unpleasant, or just cool with the abuse in Haiti?
Get your story straight.

For the record, I also though the cake comment was ill judged and crass. Survivors have been abused by the charity you volunteer for, glib comments are not really an appropriate response.

Still as long as you had a lovely cosy day in your pleasant little world - let them eat cake, eh.

Most people who work for Oxfam are fine, just like most Catholics or teachers are fine . Just because a few people in a big organisation are abusive does not mean everyone is although we need regular warnings, checks and investigations and one issue with the charitable sector is it has always attracted people who want to prey on the vulnerable as they deal with vulnerable people plus there are not the rigorous checks you get in huge corporations with tight controls and regulation.

I'm sure most of the volunteers at Oxfam are fine, are in fact worthy people but they are supporting a fundamentally corrupt organisation geared to paying for and maintaining its own infrastructure first, protecting those on its payroll second and doing it's charitable work third of at all. This latest charity scandal just serves to demonstrate the rot at the core of the big charity sector.

I have three questions:

1. Why are people so surprised to find criminals in the charity sector when they exist in every sector?
2. Why are people more up in arms about what has/is happening in Oxfam, than what has/is happening in massive football clubs that have fallen over themselves to support getting access of known paedophiles to children?
3. OP how are you going to feel when someone your charity supports does something awful - because there is no reason that the doctors/researchers you are supporting won't be drawn from the same flawed pool of humans that Oxfam is drawing from?

1/ because they purport to be better people
2/because my taxes help pay their wages
3/because the OP's charity is not suffering from the corruption of scale involved in Oxfam and it's ilk. Nor from the corrupt faux left employees passed around the charity gravy train

1. because charity is supposed to be about goodness, helping. I accept I may be naive in that.
2. because football clubs are not charities. I think Barry Bennell is a vile piece of shit btw.
3. because if we found out something we would investigate immediately and take the appropriate action. It might even lead to withdrawal of funding, who knows. But as we dont employ anyone, not even ourselves, we are pretty sure there is no gravy train.

Really? Oxfam purports to be better people? Its a charity not a nunnery! People are people. Some of them work for banks and others work for charities. The volunteers seem to me to be actually better people whether or not they think of themselves that way....people working for a salary are just people doing a job for money. They are the same anywhere.

Your tax goes to county council workers too....I suppose you would be equally outraged if any of them ever visit prostitutes (news flash - its absolutely certain that some of them do).

I thought the OP mentioned supporting researchers....researchers are just people doing a job...and some of them use prostitutes.

Radio 4's news programme on tonight at 5pm had their investigation on Save the Children - 3 different women had to complain about conduct of a senior male boss. The problem seems tob e that they were treated as 3 totally separate cases rather than linked. Linking shows a pattern of behaviour.

Why can't so many of these men just behave like decent adult human beings?

The biggest issue for me is the cover up. They knew there was an issue, yet did not report the problem to the proper authorities to allow full criminal investigation. Nor did they fully report it to authorities in the UK as they are supposed to.

Add in to that they allowed one of those accused was allowed to "resign with dignity" in order that he would "comply with the investigation". Thereby meaning this man could be employed in a similar role again. Oxfam decided their name was more important than justice. They decided their investigation was sufficient, effectively deciding they can be police, judge and jury.

I do understand that oxfam, nor any other charity or organisation, cannot guarantee that none of their employees will behave badly. What they should do is have robust pre-employment checks and reporting mechanisms, they should also report all potentially criminal acts to the appropriate authorities (as well as their own investigation).

I think there is an issue within the charity sector- not just in relation to these sorts of allegations, but in how they spend their money and conduct themselves more generally- often as worried about their revenue stream and reputation as they are about what they are achieving.

Morphene your posting is quite strange. Visiting prostitutes and abusing earthquake victims aren't quite the same and yes if a council worker was on a work trip I bloody would object.

A humanitarian charity, particularly one which purports to strive for the rights of women and girls, has a responsibility to hire people who share those values and will uphold them. "They're just doing a job for money" does not cut the mustard, if the actions of your employees fly in the face of your mission statement.

yeah...if only they'd asked at the interview if people were intending to abuse women on the job they'd have been able to entirely avoid the issue!

Its strange but in all the job interviews I've been involved in, literally nobody has ever admitted to being the kind of person that would order a van full of prostitutes in an earthquake zone.

But apparently people who run charities are also psychic and so should therefore never ever find themselves having accidentally employed a total wrong 'un....