Barnado - PR Guru?

Barnado - Saviour and PR guru
Earlier, while cooking and watching The One Show they discussed the charity “Barnados”. Barnados are a charity that helps look after troubled children who may have been raised in situations ranging from drug abuse to homelessness. They believe that every child has a right to be happy and healthy.Barnados was set up in 1867 by Thomas Barnado who moved to London in 1866. It shocked him to see young children homeless and begging on the streets and so he set up “The Ragged School” which looked after those children who were facing poverty and gave them a basic education.

One evening, a pupil at the school took Barnado to some of the poorest areas of London and showed him young boys and girls curled up in gutters or roof tops to try and stay safe and warm. Barnado then dedicated his life to helping destitute children and set up many homes for children to stay in. His motto was “No destitute child ever refused admission”.The Victorians of this time considered poverty as laziness and poor children were treated with disgust. Barnado however, needed support from the public to keep his houses running.

Barnado was a man ahead of his time. He introduced ideas for fundraising and what turned out to be great PR. Barnado used photography which was a speciality in Victorian times and took photos of every child that ended one of his homes in the state they were found in and then again several months later when they had recovered from their experiences of living on the streets. These photos were then made in post cards and sold to the public to help raise awareness of his cause and money. Captions such as “once a little vagrant now a handy workman” were seen on the postcards in an attempt to change people’s mind about poor children.

This was both successful and helped him raise enough money to open a girl’s house to help young girls living on the streets. It seems that Barnado was an early innovator in both child welfare and PR and his efforts still continue today 104 years after his death.