Beaver
Issue 833 | 19.09.15
the
Newspaper of the LSE Students’ Union
LSE Takes £40,000 Donation In Return For Inaccurate Review ACCORDING TO REPORTS written by the Mail Online, Times Higher Education, Civil Society and The Times, the London School of Economics (LSE) was paid almost £40,000 to write a glowing report about the Kids Company, a charity set up to provide support to deprived inner city children. The report, that wore the LSE stamp was often cited by Camila Batmanghelidjh, the founder of the charity. Claims made by the LSE research paper have since been discredited. In addition, the fact that £39,537 was paid to The School by Kids Company was not disclosed in the research, which has been the source of some criticism. The research which was entitled “Kids Company: A Diagnosis of the Organisation and its Interventions” and was published in September 2013 was carried out by a team of six people headed by Professor Sandra Jovchelovitch, all from the Department of Social Psychology. The report concluded that “Kids Company works with the most vulnerable children and youth” with services reaching “36,000 children, young people and their families”. It goes on to
suggest “Kids Company makes a substantial difference in the lives of its clients; its actions have [a] positive impact on multiple areas including practical knowledge to deal with financial issues and access to services, housing and accommodation, engagement with family members, criminal involvement, substance misuse, educational attainment and overall physical and emotional wellbeing ... Programmes ... have a positive impact on the cognitive, emotional and social capacities of the self.” The research team went on to argue that “much remains to be done, in particular in the current economic and policy climate. Kids company requires support from society and from the state to continue developing the excellence of its overall model of work”. However, state support for Kids Company has now come under scrutiny as, according to the Guardian, MPs question how £3m grants was given to Kids Company before the charity went into financial collapse. In the preface Jovchelovitch said, “I am delighted that we have been able to study the language of love that Kids Company makes available to some of the most vulnerable children and young people in the UK”.
Students make sizeable collection to be donated to Calaid, a charity working in aid of the current refugee crisis
Features
Far from causing growth, the Eurozone crisis and underlying competitiveness challenges are now causing many EU members’ economies to stagnate Page 15
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Credit: Flickr: MPD01605
Megan Crockett Managing Editor
Comment: Why Student Politics Matters To You
WELCOME WEEK SPECIAL
dents may seem a gulf through the often convoluted words and actions of politicians, but we cannot allow politicians, human like ourselves, to sour the ideal that is politics. While the major decision of making the country can seem to be a world away, in reality it is firmly rooted in the actions of yourself, your friends and your family, and it impacts you all as
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Trip Advisor: LSE Freshers Week ProTips
well. This is often spoken about in very broad terms such as the state of the economy affects us all or global warming will change all of our lives, but it can be broken down far simpler. A great deal of the things you care about most in your life right now from: the barriers you were up against in getting to university, the cost of tuition, the cost of living in London, how safe you feel on a night out,
the chances of securing that flat share for next year, the chances of getting a job when you graduate, and the chances of your parents still earning a decent wage by the time you graduate are all in the realm of politics’ influence. Influence though is a two-way street, and while politics works to shape our lives, it remains open to being transformed and challenged by us. Continued page 6
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Freshers Mixtape Bargain Wine Tasting
Credit: Flickr: Laurent Hoffman
Hari Prabu Politics and Forum Society President
‘POLITICS’ IS A LOADED word these days, and the ingrained reaction of many students to hearing it mentioned is to express either their uncertainty as to what politics really means or their certainty that whatever it is it contains politicians who are up to no good which is enough information for them. The distance of political life in Westminster from ordinary hardworking stu-