[Canada] Struggling to get poverty message out

from The Record

Pat Singleton gets frustrated when she sees charity groups on television complaining about their desperate need for more money.

Singleton, the executive director of the Cambridge Self Help Food Bank, runs a tight ship. She does not go over budget, and she does not complain when her food bank falls short of its fundraising target.

Yet she knows that the groups who cry loudest get the most donations.

Singleton is one of the anti-poverty activists who attended the Social Planning Council's poverty symposium on Friday.

Carol Goar, a columnist who tackles poverty issues for the Toronto Star, told attendees how to use the media to their advantage.

"You're competing with thousands of other news interests," said Goar. "Tell me something I didn't already know, so I can tell readers something they didn't already know."

Goar has upset poverty activists in the past because she talks about the good news, as well as the bad, about poverty.

She says that charities are concerned that too much good news will make readers think the poverty problem is solved. Instead, she urges activists to celebrate success.

"Acknowledge it. Then explain how much more work there is to do."

For Singleton, good news is usually only half the story. An increase in donations is usually tied to an increase in demand for services.

She is also leery of exposing food bank users to public scrutiny.

"If a picture's taken of a single mom and two kids, and the house is untidy, or heaven forbid there's a pack of cigarettes on the table, I get calls."

So far, Singleton has only gone to the media in the direst of circumstances -- after a flood that washed out her food stores, after a thief stole her organization's Christmas presents -- to ask for help.

Now she wants to bring attention to the little-known tragedies she sees every day, such as the terminally ill patients who need to use the food bank.

Joan Rawski, a campaign associate of the United Way, is familiar with those little-known stories herself.

She recalls an elderly woman who asked for food for her cat, her sole companion.

"If you live in the suburbs, you will never meet that lady, you will never hear her story," she said. "It's easy to forget that there are people who have really serious problems with housing, with putting food on the table."