It was fantastic to see Kidasha in the press this month, as our CEO Janice Miller was featured in the Huffington Post discussing the recent controversy surrounding the BBC’s Comic Relief. While much of the analysis had been around the personalities involved, Janice took the opportunity to bring the focus towards the nature of the aid and attitudes towards charity in nations like the UK.
Reflecting Kidasha’s approach and work, Janice argued that trying to apply a ‘one size fits all’ solution without tackling the multiple causes of entrenched poverty will not be effective in the long term. She argued that the debate as it is in its current form is a distraction from the fact that the time and resources being applied to this way of operating could be more effectively harnessed with differing ideas about how to bring really effective aid and help.
At Kidasha, we are a UK-based charity but we purposefully keep a small UK office in contrast to our larger team on the ground in Nepal. It’s this team and the networks we’ve created there which lead our work and projects and inform all our decision making, to ensure the aid we provide is truly what’s needed. It’s all about deriving support from locally gained knowledge, and this has seen us create a number of different programmes such as practical education courses, family strengthening and access to life skills education. Such challenging projects that don’t always make for a media moment but have positive impacts across the long-term.
If you would like to read Janice’s full article, it can be found here.