Why we need to challenge Charity as a viable empowerment organization.
Part 1: The Third Sector, bidding for our rights ?
So you thought charity was a cosy little band of like-minded people, desperately pleading for funds and help to empower us, think again ! Today's charity pretty much resembles any corporate organization and business and has retail/commercial arms to boot endorsed by the charitable commission.
Look up the high-powered and executive jobs advertised at very commercial wage levels too, see that the first £250,000 a charity raises has to go on hearing wages first....... Look also to the job description, does it contain "A knowledge of the sector the charity assists or provides a service to..", erm NO It doesn't! we are deemed to stupid too know what we want, and where would deaf or disabled for that matter gain any corporate skills and awareness anyway ? The Industry and commercial glass-ceiling has effectively sealed that avenue off for us.
Read also what a charity now is by description, note e.g. perhaps the latest wheeze to utilize Elvis Presley as 'front man', to engender and advertise supportive services. Why stop there ? They could use Michael Jackson as 'front man' to aid disadvantaged glove workers... Or read top charity executives hired, and no doubt previously fired (as in the case of 3 RNID executives !), from other organizations as failures, to pick up pin money and eek out their years as charitable fund raisers. So their background has no ground whatever in the issues or people the charity supports, a minor detail ? they know best ?
The third sector corporate hacks have decided, why lobby Joe public for funds for services they offer ? that is MUCH like too much hard work, we should lobby to be elected as political representatives, after all disability and deaf issues are a rights issue, the only fly in the ointment, is they might have to elicit support from the people they ignore, those taking charitable (And not so charitable handouts), from a government that has passed and not gone, on our equal rights.
Charities treating deaf and disabled like something at the base of their shoe, have created rumblings in Parliament. Charities have been warned unless they clean up their act they will intervene, they are still spamming Joe public mercilessly with less than subtle demands for cash and sponsorships, and it has now become the unacceptable face of our support. But attention too, needs to be addressed to aggressive online plugs and spamming as well.
Charity is a professional set up, they've no time for the grass root amateur any more. Charity executives demand higher wages, professional spin set ups, less taxes, and blanket begging at every level, the sheer unadulterated damage this 'third sector' is doing to the deaf and disability image is empowerment suicide for us, and an euthenasia to deaf rights.. Another huge worry by government is charities being less than willing to identify expenditures and provide them to the charity commission for validation.
Last year also, 75% of those who applied for charitable status were NOT really eligible for it, had NO organized set up, had NO remit set, and wasted huge amounts of funds given to do nothing put buy a computer and sit in an empty room for 6 months then fold.. You'd get a crowd of the great and good for the photo shoot, then they would vanish....
For deaf or disabled people, to determine their empowerment and means of support, they MUST be first empowered to gain the skills to pursue that, this starts by the charity commission DEMANDING charities adopt training schemes to enable grass roots to participate and climb that professional ladder, and not agree when a charity wants the right to exclude us.
We are being treated as a sector unable to determine, provide or execute the services and systems we use, and have provided a management system for charities that are jobs on a plate for NON disabled to take up, even sign language is sold to the highest bidder, as is deaf awareness and every other aspect of our lives. The third sector is also closely allied with furtive government agencies anxious to off-load state support to the private sector on the cheap, the set up is on the face of it illegal, damaging and contrary to deaf people's basic rights.
'Media Relations' is the commonest type of jobs offered for charity employment. How well can you spin the deaf as apathetic ? can you make them appear useless ? incapable ? unskilled ? desperate ? Since no-one is going to put money in our tin if they look positive or capable are they ? "We have to identify the worst aspects, or Joe public already fed up and in charitable overkill already, will not give anything" is atypical response. In part, Charity no longer relies on Joe Public, but targets corporate/industrial/commercial enterprises who can offer big bucks, and not buttons. Grass roots have no place in that sort of set up either, except as token reps, and charity now needs film stars, celebs, X-factor rejects, 'brave' people (those who put up with charities, to get some sort of kudos for themselves !).
Deaf people need to target the Third Sector as a main stumbling block to deaf empowerment or we will be forever the beggars they make us. The message is being lost in that deaf empowerment, access, and service provision, is a RIGHT, that should be underpinned by the government that has passed laws to that effect, but not implemented or enforced them, and sold our rights on to charity at cost-price. Who have now taken us out of the equation.
4 comments:
We in the USA are similarly unhappy with approaches used by the MDA and the Labor Day Jerry Lewis Telethon. They portray crippled children as their main focus, but actually cover many more areas than just rehabilitation of children.
Fortunately, deaf rehabilitation and education in USA are basically funded by government and many positions are filled by Deaf professionals. Some of them are headed by Deaf administrators.
There are still some charitable (and profit-making) groups making money off deaf people by gathering grants both from government and private donations. Many are of the oral/aural type.
I have long lobbied for our government to put their money where they claim their civil and human rights voice is, but the UK, is off-loading wholesale, deaf support and service industries to the charities, who are operating as a 'corporate companies, and the private sector' whilst offering that provision, as 'market forces' which leave many deaf out of the loop.
The worrying trend of charities in the UK of now 'cutting out the grass-root' voice so they are not 'burdened' with our empowerment or deaf activism, (The RNID went on national UKTV and told the deaf to go elsewhere if they don't like what they do, which was the turning point for me, they drew a line said we cannot cross it. They would not exist but for us, but I am nobody's commodity to be sold.
An opt out to deaf employees, is now enshrined in, and backed by the UK's charitable commission, where the RNID had the terms "Should enable/train or empower deaf people to be included WITH the RNID charity", was removed.... ad replaces with the RNID enabling them to work ANYWHERE but at their own group, but they have failed in that too, with less than 5% of total funds going in that area, most money goes to hearing 'mentors'.
The issue of how deaf can get a voice was again removed by the RNID stating you have to pay for that privilege first, this was in direct violation of the UK DDA law that stated ANY service user had a right to question, we are at odds in that the Charity Commission is backing the exclusion line, because obviously charities are saving them millions, by supplying second-rate support as cheaply as possible to as few as possible...
The price is they silence us. This amounted, in my view, to directly discriminating against deaf people to work at their own provision, and to strive for their ultimate empowerment and freedom, equality it wasn't !
They don't have issues with aural or oral, since the entire management apart from ONE is hearing.... Also, deaf people were none too sure that 'state' empowerment is real, but to me it is them or nothing now, because at least via laws, government themselves set up, we had a legal right to be there, and be seen to lobby.
It seems charities and government have colluded to move the goalposts, in many respects charities are lining up against deaf grass roots here.. We cannot now be seen lobbying for advances without challenging charity itself, who use rhetoric like "Ungrateful deaf, you should be glad of what we provide..." etc, this is designed to pit us against the public, and indeed against other deaf.
I feel I have no choice really but to oppose.
As you know, I support the sentiments that you express, MM. But until more deaf wake up and smell the coffee, charity will continue to use and oppress us.
Many are fooled by the flimsy mask of benevolence or are more interested in facebook.
Well Tim, I cannot compete with facebook, and as I understand that medium, It is trivia obsessed and social oriented, and not the slightest bit interested in changing things for the better.
I confess I do not understand what language they use either ! If I was 14 perhaps....
Not one issue has emerged from social sites for the deaf as yet, facebook sites set up to campaign seem not of interest to the deaf trivia merchants, it is a sea of apathy drowing everything.
It is why I opposed Facebook/Twitter and similar sites and offer zero links to them nor got involved in it. If you are interested in campaigning for better then facebook is a negative, it has the people, but irrelevant and juvenile/childish content.
If I believed for a second we could engage with these facebook deaf I'd have a go, but even subtitling facebook/SEE HEAR campaigns and such get about 5 hits a week or a month. Even at my worst I can beat that.
The other thing is the UK has no deaf base any more, and no platform to launch from. Deaf-UK had the reputed biggest, but was swamped with in-fighting. In practice and after a few years I am perhaps nearer to their base than I was at the start, the only barrier was BSL, I can only put it on equal level to other means not a primay level..
While they are talking cobblers there on facebook, Rome is burning..... It seems deaf group-power is lost in the main. If we give up who else is there ?
oops there goes another rubber-tree plant :) There are other means to use to attack the charitable negatives, via their sponsors and such and making it clear how groups like the RNID abuse this funding to our deteriment, do it often enough I believe someone is going to listen.
Or at least we force the RNID into the open. You just have to keep chipping away, remember the hare and the tortoise lol.
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