Last week, I read an article showing Camila opening a food kitchen for up to 3,000 children and youths. She has said that 50 former staff had volunteered to run the Kids Dining Room, which has opened beneath a railway arch in Lambeth, South London – maintaining the lifeline that was Kids Company to those kids who are still desperate for her help. Sadly, I’m reminded of Camila’s haunting words a few months ago and hope that in many ways she is wrong. She said that without vital government funding there will be an inevitable slide towards closure or, at the very least, a much diminished version of what it is today… ‘we will be able to offer them food, hopefully, and at least give them the dignity of being a compassionate witness to their experience. But we are not going to be able to sort out their problems because we do not have the resources.’ She goes on to say, ‘The scale of what is arriving at our door is too profoundly disturbing for us to be able to address it through unpredictable morsels of funding.’
Furthermore, Batmanghelidjh, in a previous interview with the guardian made an extremely powerful statement about the purpose of her charity. For all the political back and forth, there is something about the following statement that touches on something very important and perhaps goes some way in explaining the difficulty of quantifying the charity’s work. It references the world view of the emotional have and have nots:
“At some point, the two shall meet…and when you get a much violated individual meeting a very cared for individual, the violated individual’s rage will bring down the well cared for individual. That’s what people haven’t understood yet.’
That statement resonates somewhere deep. We’ve already seen it in the news…seemingly random acts of terrible violence lacking all empathy and haloed in a terrible rage. It makes sense to believe that it has its genesis here. A lifetime of abuse and misery bumping up against love and understanding. It’s not so hard to understand that desire to want to tear it all down…make it all even or wipe it away. And make no mistake there are young people out there searching for someone to pay…for something…anything. Many of the young adults the charity dealt with have experienced sexual and physical abuse, mental health issues, chaotic family environments and addiction. They are deeply disturbed and greatly in need of help. With the closure of Kids Company the world is a worse off place for all of us.