Save the Children launches
campaign to help UK families in poverty
The international aid charity Save the Children – best
known for its work with starving youngsters in Africa – has launched its first
domestic fundraising appeal, asking the public to dip into their pockets to
help UK families plunged into poverty by cuts and the recession.
While the appeal target is modest compared to
Save the Children's international humanitarian appeals, the campaign will be
seen as a symbolically significant attack on what the charity says is the
coalition's failure to tackle mounting poverty, hardship and inequality in the
UK.
Launching its appeal, which bears the slogan “It
Shouldn't Happen Here”, the charity said: "It is shocking to think that in
the UK in 2012, families are being forced to miss out on essentials like food
or take on crippling debts just to meet everyday living costs."
Save the Children plans to spend money raised on
its Eat, Sleep, Learn, Play programme, which gives cookers, beds and other
essential household items to families living in poverty, and its Fast scheme, which helps
low-income parents to provide at-home educational support to their children.
Although families below the poverty line
(£17,000 a year household income) are worst hit, working families on
"modest" household incomes are increasingly struggling to make ends
meet as they attempt to cope with shrinking incomes, soaring food and energy
costs, and cuts to welfare benefits and public services, says the report.
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Read the text and answer the following questions
(justify your
answers by quoting the text)
1. What is the aim of this
fundraising appeal?
2. Why is the appeal so special?
3. What is the poverty line in the
UK?
4. What are the main problems faced
by the poorer families?
5. What measures the charity would
like the government to take?
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