Charity is about giving. Self-help is about doing it for yourself, bereft of dependency. But this is where the difference between self-help and charity unravels. Charity, given as part of a programme for self-improvement, is no longer the debilitating affair it can often become. Charity as a means of stabilising someone's life, in order to help themselves, creates opportunity.
Charity becomes dynamic when it's related to social change.
Not just something that keeps you where you are. Because we are so totally committed to the concept of self-help it does not mean that we are blind to the creative part that charity can play. To use charity to put someone in a better position to win control of their lives is charity at its best. There is no contradiction between The Big Issue insisting that homeless people have to learn to help themselves, and at the same time using charitable means to achieve that. The double purpose of The Big Issue Foundation is what makes our work unique.