February 3, 2010 | Read Time: 1 minute
Raising money by soliciting pedestrians has become a despised profession in Britain, where street solicitors are known as “chuggers” or charity muggers.
Now, in a new video, The Guardian‘s entertainment editor, Paul MacInnes, poses as a street fund raiser and asks passersby to tell him: Why do people hate chuggers?
Wearing a bright yellow vest and holding a clipboard, Mr. MacInnes finds that he cannot get anyone to talk to him, much less donate money. Only after stashing the vest and clipboard does he begin to find people who wil talk.
One man, for example, tells Mr. MacInnes that most chuggers are “mercenaries.” He says that they have been known to grab hold of people and even pull earphones out of pedestrians’ ears in order to make their pitches. He also describes one chugger trying to raise money to fight a deadly disease who told a mother who was unwilling to give that he hoped her child never suffers from the disease.
Only one pedestrian interviewed by Mr. MacInnes said that she did not mind being solicited on the street–as long as it is for a good cause.
The journalist’s conclusion: Street fund raisers are dogged by public disgust, and the British government has wanted to crack down on them, but they probably don’t deserve the bad reputation they have.
Do you agree?
