Overseas aid that can't go abroad.

[housesparrow]

Is this really a good use of our resources?


The Department for International Development is spending £3 million over three years on a scheme called Global Community Links (GCL) which funds projects intended to educate the British public about impoverished nations, chiefly in Africa and Asia.

Trade unions, charities, schools and churches can apply for the money - but any organisation that receives it must agree to spend it all in Britain, and is specifically barred from sending any abroad.

The initiative is being funded even though the Conservatives attacked such UK-based "awareness" spending when they were in opposition and said it would end as soon as they came to power.

The revelation will raise further questions over why DfID was one of only two Whitehall departments, along with the Department of Health, to be spared cuts in its budget by the Coalition.

Critics suggested that the department should restrict its spending to projects in poor nations, and accused the Government of funding "propaganda".

(story continues)

[riotgrrl]

The money should go abroad.

I'm quite interesed in the whole overseas 'aid' thing having a friend who works in that field. There are a lot of wellpaid UK citizens moving round the world from place to place working for the international organisations. They are a 'community' in their own right, all knowing each other, and whenever they're in the same place meeting up in certain 'approved' bars. (By 'approved' I mean, the bars that the international aid community have chosen in each city.)

Hugely bureaucratic. Governments always want lots of stat and form-fillilng to measure the impact of their work.

The likes of Oxfam try to make it look like a straightfoward thing - you give them the money, they buy a goat, they give it to a poor family - but it's far more complex than that.

But no, the money should not be spent on education in the UK.

[aubrey]

Not even if that could generate more donations?

[housesparrow]

Jan 16, 2011 12:19:40 GMT aubrey said:

Not even if that could generate more donations?

Difficult one. You'd have to convince me that the donors would not have given to an overseas charity anyway, if not the one being promoted.

Most people learn about poverty overseas from their television sets. I suspect that these public relations exercises do more than preach to the already converted.

[Patrick]

Surely it's what the Commonwealth Institute was all about? Instead of closing it perhaps they could have simply re-jigged it to encompass all struggling nations. Anyone else been there? We used to get dragged round regularly, linked to our Geography lessons at the time. It meant a day off school and - Get this! A visit to the Wimpy at Streatham on the way home!

Not to mention a kiss and a cuddle in the dark of the minibus along the A23.