Charity Work Research Articles

Urban development

‘Perhaps the planning process is inherently “out of control”’, writes Adrian Atkinson in this article (see City 8(1), pp.89–108 for a related discussion). A refusal to take responsibility for our settlements as they grow in uncontrolled ways, alongside unsustainable inputs of non‐renewable fuels sets the tone for this deeply questioning article. Atkinson laments that in our ‘post‐modern’ world we ‘avoid looking at the larger picture and thus the causes of worsening conditions’, but also urges us to ‘return to more strategic thinking’ embedded in participatory planning processes. Atkinson focuses on the global south where increasing social conflict and insecurity and degraded environmental conditions are a universal accompaniment to urbanization. More worryingly, current urbanization is not associated with industrialization, and leaves huge swathes of the population disconnected. Drawing on case studies from local initiatives in the global south, Atkinson concludes that planning processes are tolerated in the global South as long as they focus on charity work amongst the poor. Transforming local initiatives into systemic change requires’a shift in our collective consciousness and taking hold of the means to determine how our future will be organized’.

The outstanding young person of the world 2004

Koshy Eapen has recently been named “Outstanding Young Person of the World 2004” by Junior Chamber International—previous winners include JF Kennedy, Elvis Presley, and Jackie Chan. He9s an aspiring geriatrician with degrees in epidemiology, management, and creative writing, and is active in both research and charity work. Currently working in the United Kingdom, his broad research focus is on delivering high quality, modern geriatric care at low cost in developing countries. He has also launched a charitable trust, which is now estimated to be India9s largest private medical education charity.

Von der Gemeinde zur "Community": Judische Einwanderer in Chicago, 1840-1900 (review)

Reviewed by: Von der Gemeinde zur "Community": Jüdische Einwanderer in Chicago, 1840–1900 Christiane Harzig Von der Gemeinde zur "Community": Jüdische Einwanderer in Chicago, 1840–1900, by Tobias Brinkmann. Studien zur Historischen Migrations-forschung 10. Osnabrück: Rasch Verlag, 2002. 444 pp. € 29.90. Brinkmann's study of the Jewish community in Chicago in the second half of the nineteenth century addresses the context of German and Jewish immigration, the relationship between class, ethnicity, and religion, aspects of association and acculturation, and the complexity of ethnicity in a modernizing America. The author announces his main research interest as the development of fundamentally new, different forms of Jewish "Gemeinschaft," that is, he wants to know when the Jewish community or communities in Chicago emerged, which structures they produced, and how they developed in light of assimilation and ethnicization processes. Since—unfortunately—he has chosen a diachronic rather than a topical approach, the second chapter summarizes the history of Jewish emigration from Germany, its motives, paths, networks. The third chapter outlines the rise of Chicago as a fast-growing American city and focuses on the Jewish element in this urban development. These two chapters mainly rely on secondary material. Chapters 4 to 6 chronicle the development of Jewish community life: the pioneer generation (1840–1855), community building in the new fatherland (1860–1870), and the community in crisis (1870–1880). Chapter 7 introduces the "other" Jews from Russia and their impact on existing community structures, and Chapter 8 addresses issues of modernization affecting the German-Jewish community from 1880 to 1900. Chapter 2: While between 1860 and 1914 almost 50 million people left Europe for North and South American, the number of ca. 100,000 Jews emigrating from German and some 10,000 from neighboring regions between 1815 and 1880 seems rather small. However, as the author argues, in relation to their share in the population they were over-represented. Bavarians, driven [End Page 214] by the search for improved social and economic conditions, more personal freedom, and fear of repression, developed a well organized network for migration to Chicago between 1840 and 1860. These people played a prominent role in the emerging Jewish community. Chapter 3: At first, it is the well established Jewish community of New York that introduces a scheme to guide the newly arrived out of the city and into newly opening terrain in the west. However, Jews soon moved from the hinterland into the emerging urban center of Chicago, taking up professions, first as the proverbial and despised peddlers, but soon building up small businesses and carving out a niche in the newly emerging textile industry. We learn of the establishment in the 1840s and 1850s of the Jewish Burial Ground Society, the first religious community (Gemeinde), a lodge of B'nai B'rith, and the United Hebrew Relief Association. The arrival of Jews from Posen (the German-occupied part of Poland) as well as the conflict between conservative/traditional and reform concepts of theology and religious practices soon made the concept of a unified, German-style, Jewish community obsolete. Charity work became the glue that pasted together the new network which was now based on voluntarism and diversity. The author also addresses the issue of antisemitic prejudices. While in the 1850s Jewish business people were still confronted with the "Shylock image" and stigmatized as unreliable, in the 1870s and 80s their business success and trustworthiness as well as their patriotic performance in the Civil War (as shown in the following chapter) was acknowledged. Chapter 5 outlines the development from the outbreak of the Civil War up to the Great Fire in 1871. In close cooperation with the "German community" the Jews mustered a contingent which became part of the German troops. The task was to defend American freedom, and parallels between the slavery of African Americans and the ancient suffering and persecution of the Jewish people were drawn. During the war very little anti-Jewish propaganda was voiced in the English press. In the remainder of the chapter the Jewish population is situated in the social and geographic landscape of the city by using a list of donors for the Jewish Hospital as assembled...

Slumming: Sexual and Social Politics in Victorian London (review)

Reviewed by: Slumming: Sexual and Social Politics in Victorian London William A. Peniston Slumming: Sexual and Social Politics in Victorian London. By Seth KovenPrinceton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2004. Pp. 399. $29.95 (cloth). Seth Koven has written a very "queer" book. It is an engaging study of philanthropy in late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century London. By philanthropy, he means the activities of journalists, such as James Greenwood and Elizabeth Banks, who exposed the conditions of the poor in [End Page 215] their writings, as well as medical missionaries, like Thomas John Barnardo, who documented his work among the orphans of London in pamphlets and photographs. He also examines the work of other educated men and women from the middle and upper classes who devoted time and energy to the assistance of the lower classes. In particular, he is interested in women's charity work in general and men's involvement with the settlement houses of East London, especially with Toynbee Hall and Oxford House. He points out that these men and women were engaged in a phenomenon called "slumming," which had, by the late nineteenth century, lost its traditional connotation of "sensationalism, sexual transgression, and self-seeking gratification" (8) and which had been redefined as "charity, sociological research, Christian rescue, social work, [or] investigative journalism" (9). However, as Koven demonstrates throughout his book, the boundary between these two meanings was never so clear and simple. Behind the moral altruism of the elites lay "a kind of passion"—to use Henry James's phrase—that Koven sees as distinctly "queer," a term that he uses throughout his book. As he explains himself, "The widely shared imperative among well-to-do men and women to traverse class boundaries and befriend their outcast brothers and sisters in the slums was somehow bound up in their insistent eroticization of poverty and their quest to understand their own sexual subjectivities" (4). Koven pursues his subject through a close reading of texts and images. He claims to use no single methodological or theoretical approach, although one could classify the work as an example of cultural history at its best. He writes: "If a methodology makes it possible to tease out meaning from my evidence, I have used it to the best of my abilities" (18). His analysis of class and gender differences allows him "to recapture the altogether messier mingling of good intentions and blinkered prejudices that informed [the reformers'] vision of the poor and of themselves" (3). In the process he provides some astonishing insights into the erotic and sexual nature of those well-meaning but prejudiced reformers. James Greenwood was "The Amateur Casual," the pseudonym under which he wrote his sensational account of spending the night in one of the casual wards for homeless men in Lambert, London, in 1866. What made his account so sensational, according to Koven, was the not-too-subtle implication that the casual wards had turned into male brothels. Upon his arrival at the ward Greenwood was forced to perform a kind of "striptease" (39), after which he plunged his naked body into a pool of cold and dirty water that had been polluted by all the other men who had gone before him. This bath, which was supposed to have cleansed him, had in essence brought him into "a disconcerting intimacy" with the physically corrupt and morally degenerative inhabitants of the ward (39). The sleeping quarters only accentuated the promiscuity of the bath, since it was in the cold dark dormitory that men paired off to "club together," as Greenwood described the physical proximity of the scantily clad men. By playing off of the sexual [End Page 216] anxieties of his readers, Greenwood was able to initiate further investigations into the conditions of the casual wards by politicians and officials, who ultimately enacted a number of bureaucratic and parliamentary reforms, culminating in the 1898 Vagrancy Act. Furthermore, Greenwood inspired "a tradition of writing about culture and society, poverty and sexuality" (74) that included the works of Matthew Arnold, Blanchard Jerrold and Gustave Doré, Jack London, and George Orwell. What fascinates Koven about Greenwood's "A Night in the Workhouse" is "the complex links between sexual...

“It’s Just about being Fair”

Constructions of women’s activism as social service, volunteer, or charity work contribute to the relative invisibility of these forms of activism. The author conducted field research at an affiliate office of the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation. She analyzes how these women volunteers resist the label “activist” at the same time that they engage in activities that resemble activism. The author also examines the reasons for their resistance to the term. Her analysis shows that implicit connections between constructions of activism and gender shape the extent to which volunteers think of their work either as political or as activism. In light of Komen’s heteronormative gender ideology, the author concludes by raising questions about the relationships among gender, activism, and civic participation.

Hannah More and the Invention of Narrative Authority

This paper proposes that the development of omniscient narration in the nineteenth-century domestic novel was deeply indebted to strategies of surveillance and observation formulated by Hannah More. In an examination of More's Cheap Repository Tracts, her Strictures on Female Education, and her novel, Coelebs in Search of a Wife, I argue that More's conception of a peculiarly feminine style of observation to be used in charity work paved the way for feminine authority in the novel. While More's project is in no way explicitly feminist, her provisions for female narrative authority had significant consequences for later women writers.

'love Transcends Borders' or 'blood is Thicker than Water'? The Charity Work of the Compassion Relief Foundation in the People's Republic of China

This paper looks at the Compassion Relief Foundation, a charity organisation originating from Taiwan, and tries to understand how it has managed to provide relief to victims of natural disasters for more than ten years in nineteen provinces, autonomous regions, and special municipalities of the People's Republic of China, despite the vicissitudes of cross-Straits relations and amidst recent bouts of religious persecution. The essay starts with an introduction to Compassion Relief: it presents its history as a charity organization, and then situates its activities in the PRC within the context of tense relations between China and Taiwan, as well as economic reforms in the PRC. The paper then questions three hypotheses advanced to explain the acceptance of Compassion Relief 's activities by the Chinese government. It discusses the view that such approval results from political calculations directed at Taiwanese; the argument that it heralds change in the Chinese state's approach towards the social role of religion; and the claim that it signals the emergence of an autonomous civil society free of government interference. The essay expresses reservations about these views and concludes that the activities of Compassion Relief in the PRC rather suggests the existence of a symbiotic relationship between society and state officials at the local level.

Cities, Sin and Social Reform in Imperial Germany

Cities, Sin, and Social Reform in Imperial Germany breaks new ground in the history of social thought and action in Imperial Germany, focusing on socially liberal efforts to counteract perceived problems in the area of moral behavior.Thematically and methodologically wide-ranging and innovative, this volume considers a broad spectrum of responses not only to the supposed breakdown of social cohesion but also to specific forms of deviant behavior. It draws on large numbers of writings from the period by clergymen, jurists, medical doctors, educators, social workers, and others. This literature illuminates the histories not only of urbanization and cities but also of sexuality and Christianity, crime and criminology, leisure and education, youth and women, charity and social work, and the welfare state as well as local government.Focusing on positive instead of escapist responses to the challenges that inhered in urban society, this work can be read as part of an ongoing reassessment of the German Empire that points away from the idea that Germans were traveling an antimodernist Sonderweg, or special path, that led inevitably to National Socialism and the Third Reich. Although intended primarily for scholars and students of modern Germany, this book should speak to a variety of readers, among them anyone who cares about the history of cities, deviant behavior, or social reform.Andrew Lees is Professor of History, Rutgers University.

A Calvinist Pious Society

I collected stories of conversion from university students in Kolozsvár/Cluj. They had come into contact with representatives of the revival movement and constructed their own identities under the influence of the identity patterns conveyed by these people. The conversion means that their relationship with God becomes personal in that they accept salvation from sin for themselves, declare themselves to be the children of God and place their lives under His guidance. This goes together with a new way of life involving daily reading and interpretation of the Bible, impromptu personal prayers and participation in charity work. In the stories of conversion they speak about this new identity and the process through which they changed their identities. Parallel with the restructuring of the individual identity the collective identity also changes since, from the time of their conversion, they regard themselves as members of the community and the activity of the community extends to all fields of life: Bible hours, religious services, sports, summer camps, film club, etc.

‘Love Transcends Borders’ or ‘Blood is Thicker Than Water’? The Charity Work of the Compassion Relief Foundation in the People’s Republic of China

This paper looks at the Compassion Relief Foundation, a charity organisation originating from Taiwan, and tries to understand how it has managed to provide relief to victims of natural disasters for more than ten years in nineteen provinces, autonomous regions, and special municipalities of the People’s Republic of China, despite the vicissitudes of cross-Straits relations and amidst recent bouts of religious persecution. The essay starts with an introduction to Compassion Relief: it presents its history as a charity organization, and then situates its activities in the PRC within the context of tense relations between China and Taiwan, as well as economic reforms in the PRC. The paper then questions three hypotheses advanced to explain the acceptance of Compassion Relief ’s activities by the Chinese government. It discusses the view that such approval results from political calculations directed at Taiwanese; the argument that it heralds change in the Chinese state’s approach towards the social role of religion; and the claim that it signals the emergence of an autonomous civil society free of government interference. The essay expresses reservations about these views and concludes that the activities of Compassion Relief in the PRC rather suggests the existence of a symbiotic relationship between society and state officials at the local level.

Knowledge in Trust: Sufi Women in Istanbul

The author focuses on an informal Sufi group of women in Istanbul, with only peripheral connections to the traditional established orders. The women in the group studied instead have organized their activities in the form of a religious endowment offering regular prayer meetings and basic religious education and charity work to other women in their neighbourhood. The group is an example of the many independent religious non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that have emerged in Turkey since the early 1980s. By offering social space for networking, a ritually proper place for joint worship and access to theological knowledge, the group has given individual women access to religious authority otherwise restricted to men in this local environment.

IMMIGRANT WOMEN'S PORTRAITS: THE SOCIO-ECONOMIC PROFILE OF THE GREEK CANADIAN WOMEN

The paper explores the socio-economic status of women of Hellenic ethnic origin in Canada (both single and multiple). Such status was mostly looked at through the indicators of income, education and occupation as reported in the 1991 census. Greek women who arrived in Canada before WWII and the 1950’s-1970’s heavy Greek migration did not really enter the labour force. When they did, they, and their daughters, worked mostly at family business. However, their community and charity work was unsurpassed. As the Greek immigrant women who arrived in Canada during the 1950’s to 1970’s dominate the portrait of the group, they have overshadowed whatever inroads the descendents of the early arrivals had achieved. This last wave entered the host society at the lowest socio-economic levels such as contract workers for factories, as domestics, and as hospital workers. Upward mobility has been slow and hard. The 1991 data indicate that they rank low at the social status indicators. However, this portrait is expected to radically have changed during the decade of the 90’s. New immigration from Greece has come to an end; 1991 was the turning point when the Canadian born Greeks surpassed in numbers those born elsewhere, and; the 90’s decade has seen the retirement of the immigrants women from the labour force and the entrance of their educated and skilled daughters

The Victorian Ethical Foundations of Social Work in England--Continuity and Contradiction

Summary In this article we argue that during the Victorian era certain ethical foundations of best practice were identified and were central to the work of particular individuals. We also argue that there was a strongly discriminatory moralistic basis to social policy and mainstream charitable intervention that militated against these ethical founda tions. We suggest that this contradiction is replicated in New Labour's 'Third Way' and that we need to heed the tradition of social inclusion espoused by some of the Vic torian practitioners discussed if we genuinely mean to put into practice the ideas of social worth and community espoused by New Labour rather than return to the Vic torian distinction between the 'respectable' or 'deserving' poor and the 'pauper'. The history of English charity, philanthropy and social work has largely disappeared from the curriculum of professional education and training and from the research assessment descriptor of the subject area in the UK, but the ethical foundations for practice that were established in the Victorian era have proved most durable. More surprisingly, the government of the UK has taken up many of the Victorians' founda tional ideas in its search for a new political programme—the Third Way—to address

Catholic Representatives in Parliament: The North West of England 1918–1945

Cardinal Manning argued that the Catholic Church had two services it should render to the world outside it; its first task was to save souls but secondly it should ‘ripen and elevate the social and political life of men . . .’ In 1890, however, he noted that none of the recent great works of charity had been initiated or promoted by Catholics. His successor Vaughan found that his main support in attempting to exercise social influence came, not from the English laity, but from the Irish (Catholic) M.P.s, fifty seven of whom had been returned to Parliament after the extension of the franchise in 1884. There were few English Catholics in Parliament and Bourne, after Vaughan, continued to rely on the Irish M.P.s. With the establishment of the Irish Free State in 1921 and the departure of the Irish M.P.s, one authority argues that Catholics were left with very few representatives in the House of Commons and that ‘politically since the withdrawal of the Irish members, the Catholic influence has, on the whole, been negligible.’

Charity works

Charity works

Not so innocent microbes

Qualities unparaded and unsung during a person's lifetime can emerge for the first time in the obituary pages. Dedicated charity work, literary finesse, rare dexterity on the concertina—one would often like to have known premortem.

French women and the First World War: war stories of the home front

Despite acts of female heroism, popular memory, as well as official memorialization in monuments and historic sites, has ignored French women's role in the First World War. This book explores stories that were never told and why they were not. These include the experiences of French women in the war, the stories they themselves told about these experiences and how French society interpreted them.The author examines the ways French women served their country - from charity work, nursing and munitions manufacture to volunteering for military service and espionage. In tracing stories about war heroines, but also about villainesses like Mata Hari, this fascinating study shows what these stories reveal about French understanding of the war, their hopes and fears for the future. While the masculine war story was unitary and unchanging, the feminine story was multiple and shifting. Initially praised for their voluntary mobilization, women's claims of patriotism were undercut by criticisms as the war bogged down in the trenches. Were nurses giving solace or seeking romance? Were munitions workers patriots or profiteers? The prosecutions of Mata Hari for espionage and Helene Brion for subversion show how attitudes to women's claim of patriotism changed. French women's relationship to the war called into question ideas about gender, definitions of citizenship and national identity.This book is the first study of women at war to treat both their experiences and its representations, which shaped nationalism, war and gender for the rest of the twentieth century. It makes an important contribution to the burgeoning history of collective memory and of the First World War.

Princess Diana's meanings for women: results of a focus group study

The death of Princess Diana set in train a series of official and popular responses which are broadly consistent with Durkheimian ideas of civic ritual. Mass media accounts of Princess Diana's purportedly extraordinary appeal are speculative, lack methodological foundation, and fail to give adequate consideration to potential variability in responses to her life and death. In order to explore popular understandings of Diana, focus groups were conducted in Australia with Anglo-Celtic women of different ages within three weeks of her death and funeral. The women professed a diversity of orientations and experiences towards Diana. Significant barriers to identification with Diana included a wealth gap between her and the participants in the study, the routine nature of charity work and suffering for many ordinary people, the irresponsible circumstances of her death and reflexivity about the media as a source of information. Sources of identification included her physical and character attributes, the mothering role and the universal tragedy of death. There was no support in the transcripts for the view that women identified with Diana as a feminist heroine. Caution is expressed about both the generalisability of the results of the study to other groups of women and also the comparability of the study with data collected at other points in time.

Kardynał Adam Stefan Sapieha by Jacek Czajowski

Kardynat Adam Stefan Sapieha. By Jacek Czajowski. (Wroclaw: Ossolineum. 1997. Pp. 225. Paperback.) Although Cardinal Prince Adam Stefan Sapieha (1867-1951) belonged to the highest Polish aristocracy, and though he permanently inscribed himself in the Polish national pantheon, little was written about him in the past. Yet forty-six years after his demise, Dr. Jacek Czajowski, a junior faculty member at Jagiellonian University in Cracow, came out with a full-scale biography of him. According to the author, the cardinal disliked all pomp and magnificent religious services. He was reserved and self-effacing. On occasions, however, he could be quick-tempered, ready to reprove and proverbially stubborn, a feature inherited from his Sapieha ancestors. The prelate was a Polish patriot and cared for the national heritage, and he most enthusiastically greeted the birth of the Second Polish Republic in November, 1918. Then, he got actively involved in Poland's struggle for its frontiers in 1918-1921. Czajowski claims that the archbishop of Cracow was neither a prominent theologian nor a charismatic orator. But he was a born organizer. He decided to divide large parishes (30,000 faithful or more) into smaller ones. He aimed at providing the congregation with an easy access to the clergy. Sapieha particularly cared for close links between the laity and clergy. To facilitate such a close association, he fully supported the founding of lay communities at the parish level. The prelate was open to liturgical and other novelties inaugurated by Pope Leo XIII, the Benedictines (the cardinal particularly favored them), and others. Furthermore, he wanted each rural community to have a church or at least a chapel. Sapieha often inspected the parishes under his jurisdiction. In addition, he got actively involved in charity work, which activity was particularly evident during World Wars I and II. Then, too, he was a compassionate person. He did much to alleviate the plight of the needy. He also cared for orphanages and homes for the elderly. The cardinal frequently appealed to the rich not to forget about the poor. At the same time, he was relatively conservative; he condemned the class-struggle theory, advocating social solidarity in its stead. With regard to the State, Sapieha was a firm advocate of Church autonomy. He was, for example, opposed to concordats and energetically fought against that of 1925, concluded between the Holy See and Poland. At the same time, Pope Pius XI favored them. The author also speculates on the reasons for Sapieha's relative isolation under his pontificate. He developed a conflict with the future Pius XI when Achille Ratti was the Papal Nuncio in Poland. Furthermore, his persevering opposition to the 1925 concordat, his cold relations with the Sanacja regime (1926-1939), his obstinacy, and other reasons could in no way endear him to the Holy Father. Early in 1939, Czajowski states, the prelate felt old and physically exhausted and, therefore, he petitioned both Pius XI and his successor to let him resign. Yet the rapidly worsening international situation influenced him to remain at his post to the great relief of Pope Pius XII. Sapieha particularly distinguished himself in 1939-1945, when Poland was ruled by the Third Reich. …

Bridging a gap

There has been a quiet revolution in UK medical charities over the past two decades. Increasing competition for donations, adoption of new roles relative to the state and private sectors, and the requirement for more accountability have all played their part in the movement away from a total reliance on volunteers to a greater use of professional expertise — not only in media relations and fund-raising, but also in the communication of science.Since the recent comment in Nature on sexism and nepotism in science, previously unspoken reasons for my (and no doubt many others') leaving academia have become an acceptable topic for after-dinner conversation; this article presents some of my story. Like many people, I had reached the stage in an academic career when short-term grants were no longer acceptable or secure enough, but tenure seemed an elusive goal. As an immunologist with a clinical bias, I took an unusual career decision and became Research Liaison Officer for the UK's Multiple Sclerosis Society.Biomedical research funding in the UK is more reliant than ever on charity money. The 99 charities belonging to the Association of Medical Research Charities fund more biomedical research than the government's Medical Research Council. These charities have a major role to play not only in funding research, but also in influencing its direction. In the UK, the Wellcome Trust funds the lion's share, but other charities can have a huge impact, often funding the majority of research in one particular area.Along with the need to account for how money is spent on medical research, there has been a clamouring by donors and lay audiences for more meaningful information about the science ‘their charity’ is funding. For many charities, particularly those that are patient-based or relate to a specific disease, ‘public understanding of science’ has become a major focus. In response to these changes, several medical research charities now employ scientists on their staff.Although the move to an office comes gradually to most academics in the course of their career, the decision to leave the lab and look after the research investment of a high-profile charity is a large jump to make. The return route is difficult, if not impossible, at least partly for personal reasons: charity work is less synonymous with low pay than it used to be, and the emotional rewards can be immeasurable.Despite the popular view, charitable research administration involves more than invoices and grant applications. It is also about public relations, interpretation and information about science, as well as policy, strategy and fund-raising. Leaving your own personal research agenda behind has its own rewards — by stepping back, one can gain a broad view of a field in its entirety. The range of contacts also widens, in my case to include people with multiple sclerosis from all walks of life, as well as health-care professionals, scientists, and people in industry, politics and public relations.Charitable research funders have always been responsive to researchers' ideas, but there is increasingly a fundamental change in attitude: in order to nurture their investment, charities are no longer relying solely on researchers for direction; instead they strategically plan how to get the best impact. Debates rage over the respective importance of people versus places; centres versus individual investigators; career and training versus project grants; innovation versus guaranteed results. Funders with finite resources have hard decisions to make.All scientists these days need to explain their work in accessible and realistic terms. Increasingly, funders are asking grant applicants for lay summaries, which provide a start in training researchers to explain their work in simple terms. The trend by scientists towards using the media is also increasing. But because few scientists are used to dealing with the media, they are often surprised by the public reaction. Writing, speaking and broadcasting about multiple sclerosis research for an audience of non-scientists is one challenging part of my job. The balance of making science exciting and meaningful but not promising ‘breakthroughs’ and ‘cures’ is hard to get right, particularly when trying to raise money. Raising false hopes is not only unfair on people living with an illness for which there is no current satisfactory treatment, but also, when promises are not fulfilled, results in disillusionment with science and scientists.Because conventional science and medicine cannot always meet the needs of people with long-term conditions, patients increasingly experience a chasm between expectation and delivery. The most common criticism I hear is that the needs of people with the disease are not being addressed by biomedical research. So, another aspect of my role is to try and bridge the gap between researchers and people with multiple sclerosis. It's a long way from planning my own finite research project, so was it a good move? Absolutely.