Running for Uganda?

Today Dan and Alex took part in a nationwide annual event called Sport Relief, in which sports celebrities, many schools, TV personalities, and anyone who wants to join in, participate in sporting events to raise money for children's charities. On Friday night there was a 12 hour TV extravaganza along the lines of the original Live Aid - with film clips of celebrities visiting orphanages, hospitals and slums in poor parts of the world, meeting children, and then begging viewers to phone in and make a donation to help these and others like them - usually with tears. It was really strange watching Miranda (a relatively new British comedian) visiting Mulago Hospital, meeting a 17 yr old mother of two whose newborn baby was dying of malnutrition. Another comedian visited a hospital in Sierra Leone, where again children were dying from diarrhoea because of lack of medicine. Another befriended a street boy in one of Kisumu's slums and later paid his school fees. Gary Lineker (a well-known British footballer) was filmed in Bangladesh interviewing a mother whose 12 yr old son had died of drowning - apparently 50 children die every day in Bangladesh from drowning, because it is such a watery country and yet people generally don't learn to swim. So the money was going to go to a program teaching children to swim. So, you get the idea. It felt very strange watching these emotive fundraiser videos, knowing the realities of the situations so much better than the vast majority of viewers, and yet still feeling the heart-strings tugged...

Today there was the annual "Run a Mile for Sport Relief" - the publicity urges everyone to participate in either running or walking just a mile - with the line that anyone can do that - but you can also opt to run three or six miles. And get sponsored to do it to raise money.

According to the Sport Relief 2012 website, the amount pledged and donated this weekend, so far, is 52,070,587 pounds!!!!! Wow. Alex raised 25 pounds, but they don't know that yet...! That is a lot of money.

I remember after Live Aid, there were a number of hitches with the way the money was given, often to projects where there was no sustainability or follow-up, and so on. I hope and would like to believe that lessons have been learned by now, and that the money given by Sport Relief will be put into sensible hands and into projects that have a proven track record etc etc. I don't actually know.

I do think that it is fantastic to see so many British families out on a sunny morning, putting in a bit of effort, or a lot of effort, to do something active and to raise money for charity. In a society which is on the whole very cynical and often very lazy (the most common pastimes being those which involve sitting down...) it was refreshing this morning to witness the "Run a Mile" event. And to see the many people out there manning the water stall, the kind parking guy who helped us park in a hurry as we arrived late, and many others ... all volunteering their time for this event.