Harvest Festival Food Bank Grumps (by sarah)
Ok so there have been times in the past few years especially after the flooding in 2007 when we have not had enough money for food - this thankfully is not the case at the moment and we hope it never will be again but you never can tell unfortuantly. During those times we were lucky and friends and family provided or lent us stuff and I have managed most years to produce quiet alot from fishing in hedgerows and growing things in buckets or on veggi plots. So I like the fact the school have teamed up with the Food Bank who provide food for poorer families but Jean came home with even more restrictions from them than before.
This time it is no baked beans and no plain pasta.
I am furious - seriously. There have been harvests when this is all I have had in the cupboard to give becuase it is the only things we as a family had ourselves and now I am being told that is not good enough. This to me is humiliting, degrading and a slap in the face.
Now I understand that they are trying to get a balance of food to give away but this is one of the issues I find with charities alot - how ever much you do for them it is not enough and rarely appreciated and probably due to the demographic incharge/mostly volunteering (not forced to volunteer but actual volunteers) they seem to think that everyone just have money to give away. I have observed people with little money emptying their wallets for charity - causing themselves hardship and yet it is not appreciated in the same way as the tenner given by big earners who really will not miss it. It's like the time the Shelter Chugger guy was really laying it on think to get me to sigh up - I explained I couldn't as we had nothing at that point - he then explained what it means to be homeless - the definition and you know what? At the time we counted as homeless due to the floods - we had just spent the summer sleeping on friends couches and office floors, startled I pointed this out to him and his response was... 'that maybe so..' and then just continued with his sales pitch and that is what is getting to me - charities run as businesses rather than businesses run as social enterprise.
Of course I'm still going to provide food for The Food Bank but I am really insulted by this. When I was younger (yes I realise that makes me sound grumpy old!) we had Harvest Festival at school, Brownies and Church and the tinned food and flowers went off to old peoples homes, hospices, hostels and childrens homes, the fresh produced was either auctioned off or made into a communial dinner everyone shared or in one case turned into a soup kitchen. There was a nicer feeling and no obligation - if all had was blackberries from the bushes along the fence of the school that was fine - of course I was young so I may have missed stuff and be looking at it through rose tinted lenses. But now there is this feeling that you have to give food and that it has to be well POSH food etc...
I just feel disillusioned with it and Harvest, is part of what I love about Autumn - it is my faviourite time of year. I think I might have to do my own little autumnal thing to set my mood back in place and I realise it is probably petty and childish to feel this way but I am just hacked of with charities in general at the moment, they just seem to be so money grabbing and that puts my back up.
Wed 19th Sep 2012 8:01 am 
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