With choice
While foodbanks are an essential for some, for others the chance to buy their own food is better, writes Jane Bradley
Choice is something that most of us exercise every day. I choose what to have for breakfast in the morning; I choose which way to walk to work. I choose what, from my wardrobe, I would like to put on.
It is these tiny, every day choices which allow us to feel like adults. We can also make much bigger choices: where we work; where we live; how we spend time with.
Lack of choice makes us feel stifled and trapped. Lack of choice is the main reason that toddlers become angsty. Every aspect of their lives is controlled – from refusing to let them eat an entire tubful of ice cream to letting them wear a princess dress to climb trees. We stop them for good reason, but to them, it is the most frustrating thing in the world.
Yet, while we acknowledge the freedom our ability to choose gives us, as a society, we are allowing others less fortunate than ourselves to have less and less choice.
When I visited refugees from the Middle East in camps in Serbia earlier this year, a local charity, Philanthropy, had partnered with Christian Aid to launch a cash card scheme which gave the camp’s residents the chance to spend money in the local town.
In the UK, this scheme, and others like it in other camps elsewhere, had caused a bit of a media storm. People were incensed to hear that refugees had been given cash – on a debit card, a bit like the one they, themselves, use every day – to buy “unnecessary items”. They were horrified.
For starters, very few of the refugees were buying “unnecessary items”. They were buying food to supplement their limited diets. Fruit, bread, milk. Often foods for their children, who were, like all young children, more picky than the adults in the group.
While this amount of money was tiny, it gave refugees the chance to feel they were making their own choices. They were doing something normal, something you probably did five times yesterday – buying something in a shop