Among the projects already offered funds under the current scheme are:
* A conference in Cambridge, planned for later this month, featuring an “Afro-Cuban
dance gala”.
The conference has been organised by the charity Cambridge to Africa as one
series of events to highlight its link with a children’s charity in Uganda,
for which it has received a GCL grant of £8,015.
The events are expected to be attended by 600 people – a cost to the
taxpayer of £13 a head.
As well as a performance by Leandro Charanga, a Cambridge-based salsa dancer who
is originally from Cuba, the event, “Celebrating Diversity: Voices from
Africa”, also includes presentations from a Swiss freelance journalist and
a Norwegian aid worker.
* Fairtrade coffee mornings to be held in Huddersfield by a group called the
Young Ethical Pioneers, which has been awarded £9,460 to promote its
link with tea and coffee producers in Kenya.
The organisers hope to attract “local celebrities” to promote the
events – possibly from town’s football or rugby league clubs.
* A video about a twinning project between a Yorkshire Dales village and a
community in Mali.
The link was established part of a wider scheme to connect people living on
the Greenwich Meridian in different parts of the world – although Burley
in Wharfedale is more than 70 miles from the line, while Tereli, in Mali, is
more than 200 miles from it.
The Yorkshire group has received £9,550 to make the video and to organise
four conferences about their work.
* A DVD and a poster exhibition about epilepsy in Sierra Leone. A
Reading-based community group, Education for Development, has been awarded £8,985
to create the publicity material, which will be seen by more than 4,500
people at conferences, in hospitals and online.
* A twinning project between people from Newcastle-upon-Tyne and Kenya to
promote the British public’s knowledge of climate change.
A grant of £10,000 to Team Kenya is being spent on workshops, a
conference and other events in north-east England. The group’s message will
also be spread through a DVD and blogs.
* A week of activities later this year in Plymouth to celebrate a link with
Ghana, including performances by musicians from the African country.
Plymouth Ghana Link has also been handed £10,000 with the aim of “widening
for the people of Plymouth their understanding and awareness of Ghana”.
Funded activities include presentations and seminars, links between schools, a
visit to Devon by a representative from a cocoa co-operative, and workshops
in Plymouth about malaria.
As recently as January 7, DfID officials were using the website Twitter to
encourage more groups to come forward to bid for the GCL money.
However, following inquiries from The Sunday Telegraph, Andrew
Mitchell, the International Development Secretary, has announced that the
scheme is to be reviewed and has asked the scheme’s “managing agents”
– organisations like the British Council and Voluntary Service Overseas
(VSO), which evaluate bids and hand out the money on behalf of DfID – to
introduce an immediate halt to all new funding until the review has been
completed.
In a letter to them, he wrote: “I ask that you consider refraining from
awarding new grants under any existing programmes you are contracted to
manage, until the review has ended and the conclusions are clear.”
Grants awarded under the scheme can range in size from £1,000 to £10,000. The
GCL scheme was launched in March last year, in the dying days of the Labour
government.
In an interview with The Sunday Telegraph, Mr Mitchell stressed that
the scheme started before the 2010 election and said he was currently
powerless to stop it.
“All of this is being done under a Labour government contract which I
cannot rip up,” he said.
“In the letter, you will see that I ask the managing agents to consider
refraining.
“I can’t force them to. But I am sending a very clear signal that if I
could, I would stop it.
“Once I have the independent review then I will be able to consider what
I can do to stop it.”
Other DfID schemes which operated under Labour have already been scrapped by
the new Government.
GCL was set up following criticism of a previous DfID initiative, the
Development Awareness Fund (DAF), which funded projects including Brazilian
dance classes in east London, a photographic scheme costing £180,000 to
raise awareness of climate change and poverty in Brighton, and the teaching
of “global citizenship” to two- and three-year-olds in Devon.
Yesterday the Conservative party disclosed new details of awareness spending
under Labour, which totalled £34 million in eight years, including £9,618
for trade union project to “build solidarity along the banana supply
chain” and £47,727 for a school drama in Derbyshire in which children
dressed as slaves.
Sam Bowman, from the think tank the Adam Smith Institute, said the GCL
programme was simply a “rebranding” of the DAF scheme.
“It is a huge waste. It is an outrageous use of money to provide
propaganda for the government. Paying civil society groups to be your
mouthpiece across the country on various issues weds those groups to the
government and prevents them being independent and critical.”
Currently £7.3 billion goes to fund DfID every year and the Coalition has
pledged to increase spending on aid in order to meet a United Nations target
of 0.7 per cent of national output by 2013.
Matthew Sinclair, director of the TaxPayers’ Alliance which has also been
critical of DfID spending, said: “Taxpayers will be disappointed that
DfID is going looking for ways to spend their money through Twitter.”
He added: “It is also disappointing that, while some wasteful ‘awareness’
spending in Britain has been scrapped, DfID is still spending taxpayers’
money building the case for more development spending rather than actually
focusing on helping the world’s poorest people as it is supposed to.
“This is more evidence that the massive planned increases in
international aid spending is a mistake. The department needs to show it can
use the money it gets now responsibly first.
“The department should at least get the same treatment other high priority
areas like science did – a cash freeze would save billions.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/8261809/Where-our-overseas-aid-goes-salsa-in-Cambridge-coffee-in-Yorkshire.html
