IT is not often that an enduring relationship can be symbolised by a Scandinavian steamship that was launched more than 130 years ago and sent for scrap in 1954.
But that is exactly Jersey’s relationship with a key international charity. Paint some large red crosses down the side of the ship and call it the SS Vega and it all starts to make sense.
Her contribution to the Island cannot be overstated: anyone privileged enough to have spoken to an Occupation survivor about those difficult years will know that Jersey really was on its last legs when the Vega made the first of six trips from December 1944.
Maybe someone reading this article will remember the excitement and relief of opening one of the parcels the ship delivered from Lisbon.
More than 80 years later, Jersey has not forgotten its debt of gratitude, which endures today, among other means, through taxpayers’ support of the British arm of the Geneva-based organisation.
Recently, through Jersey Overseas Aid, the Island has given £1.2m to the British Red Cross to support a programme of delivering cash grants to people living in trouble spots such as Syria and Lebanon.
It has also helped to fund the BRC’s work in Ukraine and Afghanistan as well as provide a ‘Programme Associate’ scheme, whose recently completed first edition with BRC involved an Islander, Athene Jackson, spending six months with JOA, six months with the BRC and another six months on a BRC project in Kenya.
This week, the BRC’s chief executive officer, Béatrice Butsana-Sita, visited the Island to strengthen the relationship further. Her visit included meeting senior officials as well as the volunteers who staff the charity’s Queen Street shop and support it in other ways.
Speaking to the JEP, she said: “JOA is quite an unusual donor because it tends to fund the crises that do not make the headlines, for example in Sudan, Syria and Lebanon. The organisation is also innovative in its approach, which is demonstrated in a number of ways, including its support of cash assistance.
“People sometimes don’t understand why cash is such an important way of providing aid to communities but it not only fast but it also gives dignity, agency and choice.
“Someone might use cash to buy medicine or another use it for food, education, rent or heating, and, as a partner, JOA understand the power of cash.”
Ms Butsana-Sita added that Jersey’s development agency was also a proponent of localisation – the empowering of organisations on the ground by supporting their own internal development, compliance, governance and financial management rather than just sending in outside aid teams.
That focus on building processes and systems helped national societies working on the ground to become ‘cash ready’ – to ensure it was secure and the cash was spent where it should be.
That process could take years of work, she said, adding that the risk of fraud was much higher for food parcels than it was for cash.
“The Red Cross and Red Crescent movements have been very successful with cash assistance,” she said. “In 2024, we distributed just shy of a £1 billion cash in countries including Turkey, Ukraine, Syria and Lebanon.
Ms Butsana-Sita added that JOA’s support of projects not necessarily in the news made it easier for the BRC to leverage that funding by demonstrating its impact to appeal to other donors.
JOA is one contributor among many to the BRCs £300m annual budget (outside of emergency appeals); the Jersey shop being another obvious source of funds, one of 300 around the British Isles.
Ms Butsana-Sita, who has a background in the telecom sector, said that, despite an uncertain world in which the USA and UK had significant cut their aid budgets, it was important that an organisation like the BRC stayed true to basic principles: such as being nimble, cost effective, prioritised, pragmatic, and diversified.
“As chief executive, I need to make sure we work within a system. I cannot tell the UK Prime Minister where to spend money but we can within a framework that means that what we do, we do well.
“We cannot solve world hunger but we can chip away at it by constantly looking at where the Red Cross movement can have the most impact.”
