John Butleron less-than-scrupulous charity collectors
I found a green sticker advertising a neighbourhood clothing drive on my doorstep this morning. It is the season for charitable giving, and if you leave out your cosmetics, shoes and hand towels in a bag, the sticker promises to conjure up a van which will take it and deliver it to the needy in "Ukraine, Africa and some other countries". Further down, they state "we do not enclosed a bag because the safety of your children and pets can be put at risk". Finally, a guarantee is provided in capital letters that "all our collectors wear identification clothing".
Despite the shamrock logo in the centre, despite the quasi-religious outline of a bird in the top right corner; despite their touching concern over the spectre of an asphyxiated Jack Russell, I am not reassured. I don't think you can be prevented from working for a legitimate charity on account of bad grammar, but it seems to me that you would have to be aware that Africa is a continent and not a country.
A cursory internet search provides little in the way of validation for this bunch, and plenty of damning evidence. People have posted warnings on blogs, and there's an entry on wikipedia about clothing donation scams. There are some weak arguments suggesting that all needs are relative and it's better for somebody get the clothes than nobody. This is clearly nonsense, because while the act of giving is unassailable - nothing but good - the act of stealing from charity can never be anything but wrong. I should know because I did it, when I was 14.
My school was a fee-payer; a place of real privilege. Despite (or because) of our public perception as hateful toffs, we were instilled with a highly developed awareness of the importance of charity. We collected, sponsored, donated, sang, ran and prayed for those less fortunate than us, those who couldn't gambol across manicured fields and play snooker on their lunch break.
My thievery occurred when I was collecting for Trócaire in a south Dublin shopping centre with some friends. If real charity involves a degree of pain or sacrifice, then this was something else altogether, because we got to miss maths class, smoke crafty fags and occasionally shake our boxes. I was always hungry in those days, and when we gathered in a cafe on the ground floor of the shopping centre for lunch, I dispatched my sandwiches and stared - transfixed - at a selection of voluptuous pastries behind a glass counter.
Someone else in the group had prised open their collection box to raise the funds for a can of Lilt, and with the seed thus planted, my stomach growled, threatening some awful gastric retribution if I didn't feed it further. Pop. The lid was off, and within moments I was hoovering up the most pornographic dessert that somebody else's money could buy, while an innocent child in Africa died for want of food. Needless to say, the guilt at stealing from two people's pockets far outweighed my fleeting pleasure, and I recall being physically sick afterwards.
All manner of sound ethical principles were taught in our school by some great teachers, but the lessons you really carry with you are the ones you learn at the school of hard knocks. Around then, our annual Christmas clothes drive was announced at assembly.
My mum went to work, filling bin liners with clothes, and I hefted the bag back into school the next day and dumped it outside the teachers' door. A week later, I was sheltering from the rain when I saw another teacher running across the school car park to his car, zipping up his anorak as he went. As he passed, it struck me that he was wearing the same anorak that my Dad used to wear. I recognised it because my Dad worked for a company that gave each employee a bomber jacket with the corporate logo stitched on the breast. This teacher was wearing a jacket just like my dad's.
I am slow to point a finger or jump to any kind of conclusion. It's possible that my teacher knew someone who worked at the same company as my dad, and that this person made a gift of the corporate swag to his friend. After all, not everyone wants to wear their company logo on their day off, and maybe the friend knew that the teacher would have liked it. Perhaps my teacher was rotating a wardrobe of varying jackets and simply hadn't selected it until the day on which I happened to see him. Or perhaps, upon finding it in my bag of clothes, he called the charity and told them that he wanted to buy this very jacket. Perhaps they negotiated a generous price there and then, and he bought it fair and square - a Christmas gift from self to self. In any of these instances, he was absolutely blameless.
Another theory I have is that he brought the jacket to the charity shop, and the person sorting the clothes wouldn't accept it because the corporate logo on the lapel contravened some kind of rule regarding anonymous donations. In this hypothetical instance, I suppose my teacher could have offered the jacket back to us, or given it to someone more deserving than he, but maybe he felt that it was unfair just how little he earned for one of society's most important jobs - taking care of our children.
Perhaps, over the course of another year presiding over drives, fund-raisers and mini marathons, the teacher had become inured to the essence of charitable giving - giving to the poor - and only participated to help send out the message that we weren't all bad. If this was the case, he was not alone. I was right beside him, shaking a box in the shopping centre. Even in the best schools, you learn that Africa is a country and a continent.
John Butler blogs at http://lozenge.wordpress.com