Editor’s letter: “Charity should be personal”

[dropcap]L[/dropcap]ast Wednesday, like last year and the year before, I was stood on the Piazza with a poppy attached to my lapel. A handful of people were there, both staff and students, representing only a tiny fraction of the university’s population. And that’s fine.
Armistice Day is something I choose to observe. Partly, if I’m honest, that’s probably because of where I went to school; my middle-of-the-road public school, like many others, makes a point of commemorating those that perished in the first and second world wars. Mostly, however, it’s something I observe because I want to, and because I think it’s important.
But despite that, my beliefs shouldn’t apply to anyone else. Like any show of support for any charity, my support for The Poppy Appeal is personal. In the same way, my mum likes cats, so she gives to Cats Protection from time to time.

The Poppy Appeal has become a weird phenomenon that some people seem to think everyone should be involved in

In the past, my friends have been involved with Movember and Live Below the Line, so I’ve given to those campaigns because of my own personal desire to do so. The Poppy Appeal is something I want to show some support for, so once a year I hand over some loose change in return for a symbol of that support.
However, that doesn’t give me, or anyone else who wears a poppy, the right to lambast those who choose not to. The Poppy Appeal has become a weird phenomenon that some people seem to think everyone should be involved in, when in reality, there are more ‘important’, more inclusive causes out there; UNICEF, Save the Children, or WaterAid, to name a few.
Every year, a handful of public figures choose not to wear a poppy in the run up to 11th November, and every year this makes headlines, closely followed by torrents of abuse directed at those people. There are various reasons for their decisions, from solidarity with the victims of overseas conflicts, to not wanting to prioritise any one charity over another.

getting bogged down in who supports what, and how they choose to do that, undermines the positive message of giving in the first place

Whatever the case, there’s no reason why an individual’s decision not to show support for a particular charity should be seen as actively disrespectful towards those who that charity represents, nor should it open them up to a torrent of abuse from those who do.
I don’t wear a Macmillian Daffodil or a Help for Heroes wristband, but that doesn’t mean I hate cancer sufferers or wounded soldiers.
As long as you’ve done your research, and you have some idea of where your money’s going, giving to any charity is an inherently good thing. But getting bogged down in who supports what, and how they choose to do that, undermines the positive message of giving in the first place.