{"id":101,"date":"2009-09-16T17:31:10","date_gmt":"2009-09-16T16:31:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=101"},"modified":"2009-09-16T17:31:10","modified_gmt":"2009-09-16T16:31:10","slug":"taxpayers-funding-brazilian-dance-troupe-in-london-borough-shock","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2009\/09\/16\/taxpayers-funding-brazilian-dance-troupe-in-london-borough-shock\/","title":{"rendered":"Taxpayers funding Brazilian dance troupe in London borough \u2013 Shock"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Those of us reading the Daily Mail regularly will already have enjoyed this <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dailymail.co.uk\/news\/article-1212935\/250-000-Third-World-aid--Hackney-Taxpayers-funding-Brazilian-dance-troupe-London-borough.html\">headline<\/a> on 12th September. \u00a0Not bad as the Mail goes, I suppose, but not a patch on the Sun's recent \"Get De Beers in\" as England's footballers strutted into the World Cup finals.<\/p>\n<p>The Mail noted: \"More than \u00a3240,000 of aid money that was meant to help the Third World has been spent on an Afro-Brazilian dance troupe in Hackney. \u00a0The project was set up to teach children Capoeira, a form of dancing involving head butts and kicks and devised by African slaves.\"<\/p>\n<p>This is a reference to DfID's development awareness fund (ie, its\u00a0education budget). \u00a0The Mail claims that this is\u00a0among 31 questionable donations totalling \u00a36.3 million this year. \u00a0After listing more such wasteful generosity, The Mail quoted a DfID\u00a0spokesman (sic) who \u00a0said: 'Development awareness fund grants are awarded to not-for-profit groups which educate the public about global poverty and how to reduce it. \u00a0This project will help raise awareness of problems faced by poor people in developing countries and also directly benefit children in a disadvantaged area of London.\" \u00a0Quite so.<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mirror.co.uk\/news\/top-stories\/2009\/09\/12\/dance-cash-fury-115875-21667278\/\">Mirror<\/a> has also covered the story, but in less detail. \u00a0Curiously, neither of the papers' websites obviously acknowledge the source of the expos\u00e9. \u00a0This is the report,\u00a0<em>Fake_Aid <\/em> How foreign aid is being used to support the self-serving political activities of \u00a0NGOs, produced by the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.policynetwork.net\">International Policy Network<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>More open-minded readers who managed to get beyond the opening paragraphs might have been rather less shocked at the list of \u00a0projects that qualify as wasteful. \u00a0These included:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\u00a360,000 to teach ethnic minority people in North\u00a0Edinburgh about global poverty<\/li>\n<li>\u00a3208,000 on teaching ethnic minorities in\u00a0Wales about the Government's (sic) Millennium Development Goals.<\/li>\n<li>\u00a3200,000\u00a0to make Asian teenagers aware of how the fashion industry hurts developing countries<\/li>\n<li>\u00a3121,000 to teach schoolchildren about 'blood diamonds'<\/li>\n<li>\u00a3259,000 to embed global issues into the HE engineering curriculum.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Pretty standard ESD fayre you might think, although there <em>are<\/em> a lot of zeros in these budgets (I comment as a cash-strapped researcher). \u00a0I sensed that the Mail couldn't decide whether it was the amount being spent, or what it is spent on, that was the bigger problem.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, all open-minded educationalists (that's all of us, of course) will want to read the full report for themselves, and not rely on the press or those NGOs (and GONGOs) in receipt of funding for opinions. \u00a0It is something I'm likely to return to.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, I'm wondering what the mechanism is that DfID uses to ensure that what it spends on young people's education is fully congruent with the DCSF's sustainable schools initiative, and how DfID ensures that all recipients of funding fully conform to its rigorous equal opps policy. \u00a0Answers on a postcard ...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Those of us reading the Daily Mail regularly will already have enjoyed this headline on 12th September. \u00a0Not bad as the Mail goes, I suppose, but not a patch on the Sun's recent \"Get De Beers in\" as England's footballers...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}