The Royal National Lifeboat Institute has been forced to defend its work saving lives overseas after an article on the Mail Online sparked an angry backlash on social media.
The story highlighted how the charity – famed for its distinctive orange lifeboats manned by volunteers – spends £3.3m a year on projects in Tanzania and Bangladesh yet has been forced to cut around 100 jobs in the UK.
Tory MP Nigel Evans was quoted in the piece saying it was “risking the reputation of the charity”.
“RNLI” quickly trended on
Twitter as people reacted to the piece with outrage and many claimed they would stop donating to the charity.Dear Mark Dowie (£189k CEO of @RNLI) I formally give notice that my support for the charity at national level has ended. I will ensure all my support goes directly to local crews.How £3.3million of donations to RNLI are spent abroad https://t.co/sSRtZGSIVH via @MailOnline— Peter Davies (@peterdavies211) September 15, 2019The RNLI was forced to issue a statement in which it stood by its international work that “saves (mostly kids’) lives” and said the amount spent overseas totalled just 2% of its expenditure and was public information.In response to the @MailOnline & @thetimes:we are proud of our international work. Its saves (mostly kids') lives. And we haven't kept it secret - it's in our annual report, on our website and in the media. We spend just 2% of our expenditure on this work: https://t.co/STztOxG1OP— RNLI (@RNLI) September 15, 2019The overseas projects include:The Panje Project teaches which women swim survival skills in Zanzibar. The burkini, which is a full length swim suit is an innovative (and cheap) way of enabling girls in strict Muslim countries, to get into the water without compromising their cultural and religious beliefsThe Creches for Bangladesh programme which helps reduce children’s risk of drowning by ensuring they have close supervision throughout the day. Around 40 children a day die from drowning in BangladeshBut this was still not enough to stop people expressing their anger.100% of
British donations should be spent in Britain.. your income will nosedive after this and that could cost lives.. shame on you.— **Keith** (@keith_bloke) September 15, 2019If that's where my donations are going then it all stops now, im disgusted with this, I never gave for you to buy swim costumes for Africans, they have their own money.— Steve for Independence Day #31102019 ♿🇬🇧 (@Glenden_Fawcett) September 15, 2019But there was also support for the charity’s endeavours. Alexa, show me the definition of "xenophobic shitbag" in the form of a Tweet please...#GetInTheSea...— Satan McBastard C-137 🇯🇵 (@SatanMcBastard) September 15, 2019If you don’t want to see a long & sickening display of racist Gammon rage this morning I’d avoid the RNLI trend. Full on xenophobic fuckery in full flow. 🤮🤮🤮— Pastor Sorah (@JamesSorah) September 15, 2019The RNLI operates over 238 lifeboat stations in the
UK and
Ireland and more than 240 lifeguard units on beaches around the UK and Channel Islands.
Since the RNLI was founded in 1824, its lifeboat crews and lifeguards have saved over 142,700 lives.Related... This Is Why Everyone Is Losing Their Sh*t About 'Gammon' On The Internet