I can imagine how some people Rio Ferdinand’s donation of £500,000 worth of toys to the children’s charity Cash for Kids. “Oh he can afford it, can’t he? What’s so special about that?” There will be, undoubtedly, be cynicism. If you are cynical, don’t bother to read on. Do something else.
Cash for Kids, I have learned, helps some 60,000 disabled and disadvantaged children in Greater Manchester. At this stage, I will say that it is quite deplorable that there are so many children who are forced to rely on charity, but multiply that number by a good number of times and this is not unique in modern Britain. I’ll also add that I do, sometimes, get cynical about charitable giving, such as Children In Need, where multimillionaires line up to ask people with not much to make up for the shortfall in government compassion. But by any measurement, Ferdinand’s generosity cannot be criticised. After what has happened to him, with the death of his wife, his efforts are extraordinary.
His wealth must be enormous but money couldn’t save his wife, couldn’t save the mother of his children. It can buy a nice car, a nice house and pretty well anything else money can buy, but it can’t buy the things that really matter. I do not pry into Ferdinand’s personal life through the media. That’s his business. He has a massive job to do without his soulmate. You might excuse him for losing his sense of compassion after the sheer injustice, the rank unfairness of his wife’s death. But he did something else. This was so much more than a gesture. It was a statement of love, of caring, of compassion.
I know what it is like to have the cheap, home made presents at Christmas because that was what life was like for me as a child. I knew the sort of things my friends were being given and it would have been inhuman of me to not be ever-so-slightly jealous. This is real life for hundreds of thousands of children today.
Rio Ferdinand clearly gets all that. Financially, it will not touch him, but then, when we give to the British Legion or to the Red Cross, it barely affects our lifestyles or choices at all. We donate because we want to, because we want to do something that we perceive to be good, to make a difference. We do not decry each other for “only” paying a few quid for a poppy when we could give all our wages. It’s exactly the same with Rio Ferdinand.
Dump the cynicism, let go of the negativity, see some light through the gloom. Some disabled and disadvantaged children just might smile, if only for a short while. If you can’t see good in that, I feel very sorry for you.
