Children In Need 18 November 2022

[ResisterRex]

Our school celebrates CIN every year. Usually I just don't send any money in and make the most minimal of efforts on the day with something around the house that's spotty for wearing.

But I'd like our school to not do it at all, and to choose something local instead to do then or another time of year.

Seems CIN have given almost £30K to "Educate and Celebrate", whose patron we will all have been reading about since Friday night. This is not the only group I'd prefer not to donate to. But instead of not sending money, I'd like to be more up front with the school as to why.

Thinking of gender identity and the current direction of travel with the Cass Review and the NHS consultation, I was hoping MNers might be able to help with a letter to send to schools as to why we are not participating and hope that our schools will instead donate to a local charity that actually helps children instead of giving money to a big pot where it might do harm to children.

A sort of template letter, if you will. For adaptation around the country as we will all be able to locate our own local charities we'd prefer to donate to.

Here's the CIN/Educate n Celebrate page I found;

www.bbcchildreninneed.co.uk/projects/educate-celebrate-2/

TIA if you can think of ways to tackle this!

Good idea. I wonder if Safe Schools Alliance have anything?
Think I'd be asking whether the school are aware of the recent revelations about several organisations that CiN fund to the tune of ...?? Namely the charity Mermaids, recently exposed as having paedophile links and a staff member with inappropriate porn photos openly online? Educate & Celebrate is another charity working with schools who employ an adult working in primary schools and speaking to children about gender / sexual identity while committing an act of indecent exposure on tv last week.

Are the activities of staff from these charities in keeping with the values of the schools and the requirement to safeguard children from harm? Given that CiN have funded these organisations to the tune of ???? what guarantee can the school offer that money collected in the school will not be allocated to organisations that promote such behaviour?

That's off the top of my head - and I'm tired but maybe "educate them" about what's going on and challenge them to ensure they're not funding these groups?

That's a good point about Safe Schools. They do drop in here so maybe they'll see or maybe they've already thought of something (I'm sure they've said stuff about CIN in the past..?)

Also maybe an idea for an outline in the letter?

What the charity does/says
What the Cass Review says
What the law says

Put things together side by side, so it's obvious what's wrong, that kind of approach?

Definitely quote the Cass review. If the NHS consultation is to be believed there's going to be a massive change heading in the direction of schools so there's no harm in preempting it.

And yes - simple lay out. Sadly some schools are so confuddled by all the vacuous anti safeguarding / be kind advice that's been sent their way from the self interested groups, they need this setting out clearly.

I'm sure I read on here that all charities that benefit from CIN (and other BBC led fundraisers like Sports Relief) have to show that they comply with the BBC's Stonewall influenced set of diversity criteria in order to qualify, even if their charitable aims have nothing to do with anything gender (or other diversity) related.