Donating to the Heart Foundation?

1 3 Sep 2013

My school participates in a program called "Jump Rope For Heart". On a special day we have a session where we doing lots of skipping. This program is run by the "Heart Foundation". On the day everyone gives a gold coin donation to them. I usually do this without second thoughts. But now I stopped and though about animal-testing for medical reasons. I found a PDF file about employment, etc for "The Heart Foundation". It also included a piece on animal testing. Here's what it said:

Research involving animals:
Experiments involving the use of animals shall be conducted, and experimental animals shall
be housed, maintained and controlled, in accordance with the current Australian Code of Practice for the Care and Use of Animals for Scientific Purposes and any additional supplementary notes: clearance must be obtained from the appropriate Institutional Animal Ethics Committee. Where research involves the use of inbred strains of animals, the
researcher shall confirm that the genetic authenticity of such animal colonies has been checked at appropriate intervals.

They're just saying they're following all the laws. How many animals were hurt and killed for this?
There are so many medical organisations that don't test on animals, look at this list: http://www.humanecharities.org.au/list.html

If I donate to them I'm helping people, but I'm hurting animals. What should I do? I've got until Friday this week to decide!
wave

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Showbags QLD • Posts: 162

2 3 Sep 2013

Veggie Veronica said:

My school participates in a program called "Jump Rope For Heart". On a special day we have a session where we doing lots of skipping. This program is run by the "Heart Foundation". On the day everyone gives a gold coin donation to them. I usually do this without second thoughts. But now I stopped and though about animal-testing for medical reasons. I found a PDF file about employment, etc for "The Heart Foundation". It also included a piece on animal testing. Here's what it said:

Research involving animals:
Experiments involving the use of animals shall be conducted, and experimental animals shall
be housed, maintained and controlled, in accordance with the current Australian Code of Practice for the Care and Use of Animals for Scientific Purposes and any additional supplementary notes: clearance must be obtained from the appropriate Institutional Animal Ethics Committee. Where research involves the use of inbred strains of animals, the
researcher shall confirm that the genetic authenticity of such animal colonies has been checked at appropriate intervals.

They're just saying they're following all the laws. How many animals were hurt and killed for this?
There are so many medical organisations that don't test on animals, look at this list: http://www.humanecharities.org.au/list.html

If I donate to them I'm helping people, but I'm hurting animals. What should I do? I've got until Friday this week to decide!
wave

I had no idea about the Heart Foundation doing that. Very disappointing to hear.

I've got a charity conundrum as well. I donate to Child Fund every month but am a little worried at the sort of food being provided (whether these foods contain animal products etc).

I've looked on their website and they have an option to send a "gift pack" of farm animals to the community which you are donating. That is horrifying to me. I've been meaning to call up and clarify what sort of food exactly these people are being fed (I just assumed that beans, lentils, vegetables, grains etc would be the cheapest and most nutritious food source).

Even if they were using animal products I would of still found it difficult to stop donating out of guilt but I recently read something that changed my mind slightly on that. They are smart these charity organisations as they pretend like you have adopted one person and one person only (which if you read the fine print your money goes into a community pool and gets spread out evenly). This is to make people feel like they are abandoning their "adopted child" if you do decide to stop donating.

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tiedyedtofu NSW • Posts: 221

3 4 Sep 2013

Showbags said:

I had no idea about the Heart Foundation doing that. Very disappointing to hear.

I've got a charity conundrum as well. I donate to Child Fund every month but am a little worried at the sort of food being provided (whether these foods contain animal products etc).

I've looked on their website and they have an option to send a "gift pack" of farm animals to the community which you are donating. That is horrifying to me. I've been meaning to call up and clarify what sort of food exactly these people are being fed (I just assumed that beans, lentils, vegetables, grains etc would be the cheapest and most nutritious food source).

Even if they were using animal products I would of still found it difficult to stop donating out of guilt but I recently read something that changed my mind slightly on that. They are smart these charity organisations as they pretend like you have adopted one person and one person only (which if you read the fine print your money goes into a community pool and gets spread out evenly). This is to make people feel like they are abandoning their "adopted child" if you do decide to stop donating.

Are you able to send me the link where it says that? I found the stuff about the animals, it said that some were used as food.

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Showbags QLD • Posts: 162

4 4 Sep 2013

4_animals said:

Showbags said:

I had no idea about the Heart Foundation doing that. Very disappointing to hear.

I've got a charity conundrum as well. I donate to Child Fund every month but am a little worried at the sort of food being provided (whether these foods contain animal products etc).

I've looked on their website and they have an option to send a "gift pack" of farm animals to the community which you are donating. That is horrifying to me. I've been meaning to call up and clarify what sort of food exactly these people are being fed (I just assumed that beans, lentils, vegetables, grains etc would be the cheapest and most nutritious food source).

Even if they were using animal products I would of still found it difficult to stop donating out of guilt but I recently read something that changed my mind slightly on that. They are smart these charity organisations as they pretend like you have adopted one person and one person only (which if you read the fine print your money goes into a community pool and gets spread out evenly). This is to make people feel like they are abandoning their "adopted child" if you do decide to stop donating.

Are you able to send me the link where it says that? I found the stuff about the animals, it said that some were used as food.

https://www.childfund.org.au/sponsor-child

Under the dropdown menu "how are the sponsorship funds used?".

It says:
"As the future of children is ultimately linked to the situation in their community, ChildFund Australia sponsorship contributions ($45 monthly) are pooled with funds from other sponsors to help meet the individual and group needs of all children in the program and to benefit the entire community. Children awaiting sponsorship are also recipients of the care ChildFund provides. We operate in this way to help as many children and their families as possible but it also means that if a sponsor cancels or can’t make a payment, individual children are not affected."

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Showbags QLD • Posts: 162

5 4 Sep 2013

These people may have no means to grow their own food so animal use is essential for their survival (first world thinking instead of third world thinking). Still this is a troubling thought that our money is going to help fund the enslavement of animals as well.

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Amy VIC • Posts: 163

6 4 Sep 2013

The Heart Foundation one is a dilemma. I'm sure if you spoke to your teacher about why you object they would let you participate without making the donation. Maybe you could suggest that next year they pick another charity to donate to? For example, on that humanecharities.org.au list that you provided there is a charity called HeartKids that does not do any animal testing.

Also, re the ChildFund conundrum, I donate to an organisation called Vegfam. (http://www.vegfamcharity.org.uk/). It does the same thing as ChildFund and Oxfam etc except it only funds plant-food projects. Which is better and more sustainable for the communities in the long run if you think about it because sending them animals is just sending them another mouth to feed!

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BFV SA • Posts: 138

7 4 Sep 2013

Some more veg-friendly charities to consider:
http://vegnews.com/articles/page.do?pageId=3875&catId=3

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Veggie Veronica NSW • Posts: 108

8 11 Sep 2013

Hey everyone, I did the skipping and didn't donate. Thank you everyone for your responses. I really appreciate it! happy

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ox.kylie.xo QLD • Posts: 861

9 21 May 2014

Amy said:

The Heart Foundation one is a dilemma. I'm sure if you spoke to your teacher about why you object they would let you participate without making the donation. Maybe you could suggest that next year they pick another charity to donate to? For example, on that humanecharities.org.au list that you provided there is a charity called HeartKids that does not do any animal testing.

Also, re the ChildFund conundrum, I donate to an organisation called Vegfam. (http://www.vegfamcharity.org.uk/). It does the same thing as ChildFund and Oxfam etc except it only funds plant-food projects. Which is better and more sustainable for the communities in the long run if you think about it because sending them animals is just sending them another mouth to feed!

So true, it is an inefficient way to consume food - it is said that 16pounds of grain will make 1 pound of beef...and the current amount of grain including that which is farmed specifically for animal feed would feed 7 billion people, which we all know is the entire population of humans on our planet so no one would go hungry or starve... not to mention it uses less water to farm plants then it does animals as well as less land and energy.... meat is considered the rich mans food because it is inefficient and cost more to rare the animals.

So really the vegan motto should be updated to "better for the animals, the environment, our health and fights poverty" happy

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They test on animals.