So you do fundraising then? No...

First a quick update. Five weeks since my last chemo treatment and counting... Feeling more energetic, sense of taste is returning, numbness in my face, hands and feet still there (especially in my feet) but liveable with. 

Next scan in a few weeks and appointment with the oncologist mid-July.

On to another blog about my life, and this time, my work.

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Job titles are weird things. I've worked in the voluntary sector most of my life, lots of people work in the voluntary sector in lots of different roles. But the drop down menu for an insurance quote doesn't seem to offer anything other than 'Charity worker'.

Even when I'm talking to people face to face, I have problems. Most of my job titles have been some variation on the theme of Campaigns officer/manager. And the usual response is: 'So you do fundraising then?'  <Sigh>   'No...'

So, now I have this blog I will take the opportunity to tell the world what campaigning really is, and why it's important - and how lucky I am to have been paid to do it!

As I mentioned in a previous blog, I never really knew what I wanted to do when I was at school and university. I enjoyed studying science, I was interested in lots of other things - wildlife and the natural world, politics, international issues - and I wanted to do some good in the world. I didn't know that there even were jobs which brought some of these things together.

But a few years on, via a PhD, some travel and then work for an international church organisation, I managed to land a job as a Campaigns Officer for the charity Christian Aid and realised I had found my niche.

So what does a campaigns officer do?

My 'go to' definition of a campaign is 'a series of coordinated actions in order to bring about change'. 

Most of the campaigns I've worked on have been about changing the policies of government or of big businesses, and the coordinated actions have often been about creating (or channelling) public pressure for change. 

So for example, back in the late 1990s at Christian Aid, our big campaign was the Jubilee 2000 campaign to cancel the debt of the world's poorest countries by the year 2000 (aka 'Drop the Debt').

We spent a lot of time talking and writing about the impact of debt on people living in the global south, and creating things like campaign postcards which people could sign and send to the people responsible for making the decision on this. (This was the days before campaign emails became the default).

It was a very special time. I joined Christian Aid in 1998, a year after the election of the first Labour government for nearly 20 years. The world was ready for change and it felt like anything was possible. I remember thinking (rather arrogantly, I now realise) that finally we had cracked how to bring about change. And ultimately the campaign did deliver $100 million-worth of debt relief for some lower income countries.

At the time I joined, the campaign was growing fast and people wanted to get involved. It was exciting writing the text of a postcard which would be used by literally tens of thousands of individuals to express their views to the government. In 1999 we all went to Germany for the annual G8 meeting of international leaders in Cologne and joined in the international 'human chain' to call for debt cancellation. 

As an aside, two random memories from Cologne: (1) Watching young German organisers taking to a small mobile stage to demonstrate how to link arms and form a human chain. The previous year, when 70,000 people formed a human chain around the Birmingham G8, UK organisers had assumed people could work this out for themselves... (2) After the summit, attending an international meeting of campaigners from around the world debating future directions, where the European campaigners were excited that the campaign had featured on the front page of the Times. African campaigners pointed out that the front page of the Times wasn't actually what we were campaigning for...

One of the things I love about campaigning is that it is both aspirational and practical. One day you'll be analysing the best way to persuade a particular minister, and the next you'll be stapling placards or working out where to buy an empty oil barrel for a stunt. 

Good campaigners are creative, and strategic. They are both idealists and pragmatists. They have dreams of a better world, but they also want a plan for getting there. They are my kind of people.

Campaigning is also hard work and very intense. Not surprisingly, a lot of people don't stay in professional campaigning for long. 

My moment to step back came in 2005. I'd returned to work after maternity leave for my first son at the start of the year. The Make Poverty History campaign was just launching. It was run by a massive coalition of aid agencies, campaign groups and celebrities, all with their own slightly different analysis of what was important.

In the January we organised a march of women priests to Downing Street - and for some reason I was included in the delegation to meet Prime Minister Tony Blair. Also in the delegation was the wonderful Dawn French (famous for playing the Vicar of Dibley). When I was introduced to her, I commented that I was a bit worried because I was supposed to know all about the issues of the campaign (trade, aid and debt). She just replied that she was supposed to be funny and that was much more worrying. Actually she was both funny and knowledgeable.

Martin Drewry was Head of Campaigns at Christian Aid then, my boss, and leader of (in my opinion) one of the best teams of campaigners ever 😉 It was hectic, exciting and frustrating. Martin would join regular calls with the coordination group and report back to the rest of us that 'Bob Geldof wants the plans changed again...'

Through the rest of that year we organised one event after another including an all night Vigil for Trade Justice. I remember leading a debate on free trade vs trade justice in a church in central London in the middle of the night with some random right wing economist. Early in the morning I walked back to Waterloo and began wondering how much longer I could do this. 

So later in the year I moved to another job within Christian Aid working more with church-based supporters and less at the 'coal face' of campaigning.

That suited me at the time, but a few years later, when Christian Aid decided that they no longer needed my services, I decided it was time to go back to campaigns. In April 2010, I joined Age UK's campaigns team, still wondering if it was campaigning that I had enjoyed, or just a particular team at a particular time. 

I needn't have worried. At Age UK I found another team of practical idealists, working out how to bring change in policies to benefit older people.

Working at Age UK had its moments but in its way was equally special to the years at Christian Aid. To begin with I was helping groups of older people run local campaigns on issues in their neighbourhoods - things like lack of toilets, poor bus services and uneven pavements. Later on I ran a campaign for investment in warm homes to prevent winter deaths among older people. They are all still issues I feel passionately about - and can bore you with any time you like...

By this time, we were in the middle of austerity, and it was much harder to change government policies - especially if spending was involved, which it often is. I realised then how naive I'd been when I was first at Christian Aid, and campaign success was so much easier with a progressive government and a healthy economy.

In 2013 I moved to Traidcraft Exchange where I've been ever since and have been lucky to work with fantastic colleagues and shape campaigns, and more recently wider communications. 

We've campaigned successfully for tea brands to publish the estates they buy from (so that workers know which brand they are supplying and can hold them to account) and for fashion retailers in the UK to pay more of their suppliers after they refused to do so during the first lockdown last year. We've also campaigned long and hard (and so far unsuccessfully) to get the UK government to change the law so that British businesses can be held accountable when they harm people in other countries.

Over the years I've learnt that you can run a text book campaign which delivers nothing and a scrappy campaign that works. And that at the end of the day, it's the people who get behind your campaign, who send emails, write to decision-makers and turn up at demonstrations and events who are the real change-makers. Your job as a 'professional' campaigner is to create the effective opportunities for them to do so.

Campaigners want to change the world, but we don't always get there. I know in my heart of hearts that a lot of the work I have done has come to nothing. And even some of what have seemed like the biggest successes are just baby steps towards a better world. 

But every paving slab mended. Every tea estate disclosed. Every dollar of debt relief granted. It does add up.

And perhaps more important in the long term has been helping people to see that if we work together we can change things. I hear a lot of cynicism around now - particularly in relation to politics - and I can be as guilty of this as anyone. But in my heart of hearts I still believe (or want to believe) that people of good will can work together to build a fairer world.

This blog is (of course) dedicated to my campaigner colleagues: Martin D, Moira, Justin, Lucy, Sophie, Judith, Sarah, Martin G, Kev, Debs, Tom B and many more at Christian Aid; Ray, Esmee, Sam, Nicoleta, Claire, Karen, Andy, Sue, Alice and more at Age UK; and Wiz, Sachin, Emilie, Tom S, Ed - and Liz, Fiona & Stephanie - and in fact all of my colleagues at Traidcraft Exchange.