How to give it in 2024

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free

The first question we considered when thinking about this year’s issue of How To Give It was how one can give meaningfully in an environment where war and conflict have prohibited or impeded traditional forms of aid. In October, the Israeli Knesset passed a bill banning the UN Palestinian relief agency UNRWA from Israeli territory, essentially preventing it from delivering aid to Gaza. Israel says that members of UNRWA staff in Gaza were involved in the 7 October attacks by Hamas; nine of UNRWA’s staff have been fired as a result. Yet that an international humanitarian organisation might be prevented from operating sums up the challenges of bringing aid to civilians when infrastructural collapse has already left millions in critical need.

Victoria Rose in her outpatient clinic at St Thomas’ Hospital in London © Silvana Trevale

Victoria Rose, a plastic surgeon who has been volunteering in Gaza since 2019, has seen the deprivations at first hand. She tells Rosanna Dodds how, on her last trip in August, she was limited to working with rudimentary medical equipment smuggled across the border and scant supplies. Her experience of working largely with those suffering from bomb blast injuries, and very often children, can feel like a hopeless effort. However, Rose speaks without sentimentality about the work of those medics who keep going, describing how many are “better than some of the staff I have in the UK”.

Rose has made a huge sacrifice by being on the frontline. Her bravery puts most of us to shame. Although aid workers are supposed to be protected, the International Rescue Committee estimates that more than 300 of them have been killed since this war began. Surgeons, nurses, food agencies and general workers are more vulnerable in Gaza than during any other crisis in recent history.

Artist Jessica Awaritefe at Bishopsland in Oxfordshire © Peter Flude

Millinery students on the Chanel and The King’s Foundation Métiers d’Art Fellowship on the Highgrove estate, Gloucestershire © Alex Kurunis

I’m also proud of our Save Our Skills special, focusing on those people trying to protect endangered industries. When Sarah Watson bought the Phoenix Tile Studio in the West Midlands last year, she did so to preserve skills that were becoming extinct in the once-thriving Potteries. “We’re now one of only three tile-makers left in Stoke and I didn’t want it to die,” says Watson of her endeavour to rejuvenate a limping industry. No one knows if the project will be successful. In the past year, her team’s energy bills have doubled, their rent tripled, and the cost of materials has gone up 30-plus per cent. What spurs them on is a determination to unite the other potteries and save an industry. Similar things are happening for silversmithing and millinery, as we report here. I tip my cap to them all.

Actor and mental-health campaigner Storm Reid © Maxime Imbert/The London Standard/Eyevine

The philanthropic impulse is kicking in younger than ever before. According to the US research lab the Blackbaud Institute, 59 per cent of Gen Z already gives to charity in some way. Young people are more likely, it seems, to take in ethical and environmental considerations when investing, and are keen to align with causes with which they identify. Marion Willingham has looked at how that is shifting a celebrity landscape in which one’s “brand” must increasingly have a cause. She rounds up eight names who are making a difference. As our cover attests: it’s all about familiar causes, infused with fresh attitudes.

@jellison22