Collecting for Women's Refuge

This week is the annual women's refuge appeal week. Women's refuges are desperately under-funded, the Wellington refuge gets less than half its money from government (and the amount they get is less than what Clint Rickards got paid for doing nothing last year). So I spent a few hours on the streets of Wellington trying to get money out of people. I quite like collecting, but not as much as I like collecting money

Starbucks was offering free drinks to collectors - I feel the same way about this as I do about the clothing industry raising money for refuge:

But I still took my free tea.

I expected more women than men to give money, but I would have expected two-thirds, or three-quarters. I'm obviously a ridiculous optimist, because one in ten of the donors was a man, maybe even one in fifteen.

I started to wonder about the women giving money. Was it solidarity that made them give? Or someone they knew? An insurance policy? A down-payment? Or just imagination?

Why did so many men not have this imagination? Why weren't they putting money in the buckets for the women they knew? Their mothers, sisters, daughters, and friends who could need refuge?

I started muttering this at men who walked by without giving money - "You're the problem, not me, not her, you, and you won't even give me a dollar."

There were some good experiences. I noticed a young guy hanging out in a T-shirt that said "I'll show you mine, if you show me yours" and rolled my eyes. But twenty minutes later him and his friend came and both gave some money.

My friend told me a story from collecting last year. A man gave twenty dollars, he looked like he wanted to say something, but he didn't. Later he came back and asked her if she wanted a drink, because it was cold, and gave another ten dollars. Then he said "I just want you to know that not all sons turn out to be like their fathers."

That's where the hope is, I guess. The possibility of change.