Secret group offers cash and hope to poverty-stricken strangers [View all]
Secret group offers cash and hope to poverty-stricken strangers
The anonymous benefactors from the Biscuit Fund have given out £25,000 in donations to 300 hard-up people since 2013 – Jane is one of them
It was July two years ago, when she was down to her last bit of food, that Jane got the call. “We see you’re struggling and we want to help you,” an anonymous voice explained. The offer of help came from a member of the Biscuit Fund – a secret group of strangers united by their desire to help those most affected by poverty across the country.
Desperate to find money and crippled by an outstanding council tax supplement bill, Jane – who was unemployed at the time – considered selling her television for a small bit of cash. She had already gone through her home selling everything she thought people would buy. “It wasn’t worth anything,” she says. “I would have got a fiver for it, but a fiver is a couple of days’ food for me and my daughter.”
Ben, who lives in London with his wife and two children, is one of the founders of the Biscuit fund, named so because of the thousands of pounds government ministers spent on biscuits while making cuts to to the NHS. He says he is not hard-up but also is “no stranger to poverty”. The fund, launched two years ago, is backed by a band of like-minded people from all walks of life, he explains, with members putting spare cash into the pot and scouring online sources for people they think are in the direst need.
Food is a constant concern for Jane, who lives in a semi-detached former council house, now owned by social landlords, on an estate in Tameside, Greater Manchester, with her eight-year-old daughter. The single mum of four – her two eldest have moved out and a 16-year-old daughter splits her time between both parents – explains how she hid the extent of her poverty due to a deep sense of shame. “It’s the actual shame of being poor anyway,” she says. “And it’s the shame of being on – I hate the word – benefits. It’s the shame of having society look down on you.”
The fund provided her with £200, telling her she could spend it on whatever she liked. She spent it on food and topping up her electric and gas metres. She bought bread, fruit, vegetables, tinned and frozen food. She treated her daughter to strawberries. “The Biscuit Fund really helped me, if it wasn’t for them I wouldn’t have eaten.”
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/the-northerner/2015/jul/22/biscuit-fund-secret-group-cash-hope-poverty-manchester-mum
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