The city council of Wellington, New Zealand granted permission to Wellington Rape Crisis for their annual fund raiser. This one day appeal brings in around 20% of the charity’s annual income and goes to help the victims of rape, sexual assault and abuse. They provide support and counselling as well as advocacy for victims and medical centres, police and the courts. They also provide educational resources and referrals to other agencies. Source. All good work and unfortunately necessary.
Wellington require any organisation to get permission to collect money on council land (public highways, shopping centres, etc) which is quite reasonable and no doubt helps to limit swindlers and other bogus charity collections as well as keeping the charity workers in some kind of organised pattern so that everyone doesn’t descend over a single weekend.
The Salvation Army don’t care about that though. They don’t seem to care about the victims of rape or about giving smaller charities a fair chance to collect money. What they’ve done is to compete with Wellington Rape Crisis and defy the council rules by collecting in the middle of the charity’s week long appeal. Another example of Christian charity no doubt.
It makes me wonder if the Salvation Army isn’t getting too big to do good any more. There was a time when I considered the charity to be one of the better Christian charities out there (not that I’d give to a religious charity when there are so many good secular ones out there) but this news is just disturbing. It comes only a fortnight after The Poppy Project was reported to have lost their funding to the Sally Army too (as reported by tenderhooligan). Of course they also have a record of promoting superstition rather than actually helping victims of rape and hold an
International Weekend of Prayer and Fasting for the Victims of Sex Trafficking.
I’m sure that’s a great help. NOT!
If you give to charity please choose one that does some good with your money and treats people fairly. Thank you.
/
The Magnificent Frog 
*shudder*