Last night was the BBC Children in Need annual fundraising appeal. We saw celebrity-led campaigns, nationwide fundraising activities; we heard stories of children coping with significant difficulties, worthy projects for needy children and young people across the UK.
We saw children who’ve suffered with cancer and other life-limiting diseases, children who’ve experienced significant loss, those who are carers for a close family member, those facing challenging poverty, inequality, and mental health pressures…
Yesterday’s Lowestoft Journal announced: ‘Christmas turkeys forced indoors as bird flu housing order imposed… Poultry farmers in our region have to bring their birds indoors this week following a nationwide order to control an outbreak of bird flu…’
Some folks think we best provide for children in need by shutting them indoors to protect them from outside dangers.
At ‘Singing for health’ yesterday we sung the old song:
Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag
And smile, smile, smile…
What’s the use of worrying
It never was worth while…
Some folks think we best provide for children in need by teaching them to pack their troubles away and keep smiling.
Last night’s show highlighted charities across the country that give invaluable support and hope to children and their families – ordinary, good people giving their time and efforts tirelessly, consistently, compassionately. Beautiful and bonkers fundraising efforts across the UK had raised £38.7 million pounds by the end of the show…
What impressed me most was not the celebrities, the glitz and the glamour, but the ordinariness of the ‘children in need’… they could have been children in the school that I worked in.
And those children were supported not by shutting them away like vulnerable turkeys, or hiding their troubles away in some kit bag, but by being open and proud of who they are – and being supported by other children and adults who’ve been by their side constantly, reliably, unconditionally.
…Remembering that we’re all children at heart… We’re all in need … We all can to be there, supporting each other.
