Jasmine Whitbread
Jasmine Whitbread was appointed Chief Executive of Save the Children UK in November 2005, and is also a board member of the International Save the Children Alliance, a confederation of 30 member organisations working in over 120 countries. Before joining Save the Children, Jasmine spent six years with Oxfam GB, first as regional director in West Africa, and then as international director responsible for Oxfam's programmes worldwide. Prior to that, she was managing director of a U.S.-based Thomson Financial business. Jasmine has a background in international marketing in the high-tech sector. She also spent two years as a VSO volunteer with an organisation of disabled people in Uganda.
FILM: Why cash benefits trump food handouts
By Jasmine Whitbread
Dawn from Wales, in Britain, and Asemu from northern Ethiopia have more in common than you might think. Both are 22, and both have a child under the age of two. What you may be surprised to learn is that they face a similar financial struggle to feed their children a healthy diet. And even though one lives in a rich country, and the other in a poor country, the answer to their problems may lie in the same solution: benefits paid to them in cash.
A half-hour documentary called Running on Empty - co-produced by Save the Children UK and Television Trust for the Environment (TVE) - shows how cash benefits are vital in helping Asemu and Dawn feed their families, although they're not always enough.
... Full article
By Jasmine Whitbread
Dawn from Wales, in Britain, and Asemu from northern Ethiopia have more in common than you might think. Both are 22, and both have a child under the age of two. What you may be surprised to learn is that they face a similar financial struggle to feed their children a healthy diet. And even though one lives in a rich country, and the other in a poor country, the answer to their problems may lie in the same solution: benefits paid to them in cash.
A half-hour documentary called Running on Empty - co-produced by Save the Children UK and Television Trust for the Environment (TVE) - shows how cash benefits are vital in helping Asemu and Dawn feed their families, although they're not always enough.
... Full article
Blair's foreign policy and the children of Gaza
By Jasmine Whitbread
The verdict of Britain's International Development Committee (IDC) on the international community's policy towards the occupied Palestinian Territory, released on Wednesday, was suitably damning. As they did with a similar report in 2004, the IDC put the development situation at the centre of their analysis. Unfortunately, in our experience, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his government tend to let humanitarian imperatives in this region play a very weak second fiddle to a foreign policy that many, including many of us in the humanitarian community, are longing to see the back of.
The report documents a humanitarian crisis that was triggered by the election of Hamas and the type of blunt reaction that we have become accustomed to from the international community since 9/11: the freezing of aid. Israel took the cue to freeze tax revenues. So Palestinian children and their families have, for over a year, been without the life preserving aid that they need because their ability to develop and sustain a working economy is critically hampered by the restrictions placed on them by Israel, and without the money that they should surely be able to rely on, their own taxes.
... Full article
By Jasmine Whitbread
The verdict of Britain's International Development Committee (IDC) on the international community's policy towards the occupied Palestinian Territory, released on Wednesday, was suitably damning. As they did with a similar report in 2004, the IDC put the development situation at the centre of their analysis. Unfortunately, in our experience, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his government tend to let humanitarian imperatives in this region play a very weak second fiddle to a foreign policy that many, including many of us in the humanitarian community, are longing to see the back of.
The report documents a humanitarian crisis that was triggered by the election of Hamas and the type of blunt reaction that we have become accustomed to from the international community since 9/11: the freezing of aid. Israel took the cue to freeze tax revenues. So Palestinian children and their families have, for over a year, been without the life preserving aid that they need because their ability to develop and sustain a working economy is critically hampered by the restrictions placed on them by Israel, and without the money that they should surely be able to rely on, their own taxes.
... Full article
