Always Hope

This week Always Hope is playing with the big boys and girls, with my unexpected guest post on Lesley's blog . After putting a little plug for the Foodbank on this blog last week , I found myself drawn into a debate with Mike Rayner, who as it turns out, is a high-powered researcher and lobbyist who knows a thing or two about public policy. I won't attempt to summarise the debate, hop over and read it for yourself. But for what it's worth, I think Mike is right about everything except one - we can both attempt to change the system, and at the same time help people who are victims of the system. It's not an either/or.

A charity which I'm keen to promote is the national network of Foodbanks , set up by the Trussell Trust and run by local churches, such as the one here in Truro . To some the idea of a food crisis in the UK seems inconceivable, but the case of Okehampton demonstrates the reality. The Devon town has been hit by the closure of three major employers, flooding the job market and benefit system with newly unemployed workers. At the same time, demand for the local Foodbank increased tenfold. One family's story illustrates why. Only very recently did the Department for Work and Pensions authorise Job centres to work with the Foodbanks , the official line prior to that having been that there was no need for them, because the benefits system was sufficient to cope with the needs of claimants. Now the facts on the ground have prevailed. The unwieldy and cash-strapped state cannot respond quickly enough when someone is laid off at a day's notice by an employer that has run out of...

It's a pleasure to support Blog Action Day 2010, even though Always Hope doesn't contribute many to the 30,000,000-plus readers covered by all the participating blogs. This year the theme is water, something which we should all care about, because it highlights something which simultaneously one of the great injustices of the modern world, and also one of its most "fix-able" problems. Put simply, millions of people are dying because the only water they have is killing them. By the time you have finished reading this, hundreds more people will have died because they have no access to clean drinking water, surely the most preventable of deaths. Water, that most basic of human needs, is denied to millions, unless they choose to drink from polluted and disease-ridden sources. At Kea we support Tear Fund , the international Christian charity, which has long campaigned on the issue of clean water. I can also recommend WaterAid , a non-religious charity w...