Observations on charity

The Hampstead office of Hilary Blume, founder and director of the Charities Advisory Trust, has for the past few months been quietly overrun with one of the world's largest collection of hand-knitted penguin jumpers.

Intended for the 15-inch-high Australian fairy penguin, the jumpers - picture oversized fingerless gloves - prevent the birds from pecking at, and then swallowing, the toxic oil that can coat their bodies after oil spills.

The colourful knits - lavender, bright orange, blue and white stripes, multiple circles, swimming fish patterns - also serve to keep the penguins warm (when they are scrubbed clean by rescue workers, the penguins lose their own natural oils which, like Vaseline, normally protect them from frigid temperatures) and fashionable. The mock-turtleneck design will transform a penguin's neckline into a swanlike arch.

But because oil tankers have recently acquired the ability to function without disaster, the almost 800 jumpers continue to pile up with nowhere to go. And with the trust's new Christmas Good Gifts Catalogue just released, Blume fears even more jumpers will arrive.

"I don't want to say I must be the only person praying for an oil spill," she says, "but . . ."

Knitting tiny jumpers for oil-drenched penguins has been immensely popular. Blume says that everyone, from junior-school knitting teams to retired grandmothers to middle-aged professionals, has pulled out the four-ply wool and numbers 9 and 11 needles to crowd her cupboards.

Blume, in flowing black dress and leaning back into her desk chair, is matter-of-fact and good-humoured, proud of her cause and able to giggle at its inanities.

Good Gifts, with its variety and scope - you can "give" friends water filtration systems or health check-ups for rural villagers, reunite child soldiers with their families, save bluebell forests - has had considerable success since she began the initiative five years ago, she tells me. Last year's popular "give-a-goat" scheme, the butt of many jokes, is joined this year by prize-bull semen for breeding, guinea fowl for pest control, snake-eating ducks for eating snakes, and a new, improved "supergoat". Specially bred for Africa's harsh conditions, this goat is "tougher and more resilient by design", according to the catalogue.

The knitting option is actually part of another donation scheme. Jumper-knitters generally donate money to research the declining population of the yellow feather-crested macaroni penguin. (For why it is so named, sing a round of "Yankee Doodle".)

Unsurprisingly, Blume is an ardent knitter and a member of her local "Stitch'n'Bitch" chapter. With the new catalogue, she wants to globalise the craze. For £25, one can sponsor a Stitch'n'Bitch group in either the Middle East or the former Yugoslavia. The idea comes with a sister project, one which takes its cue from the documentary A Slim Peace. Here, nutritionists bring Jewish and Palestinian participants together with the common goal of physical fitness.

Both projects - which facilitate understanding by working on a shared goal outside the realm of politics - are due to start up after the upcoming Jewish New Year.

"If you bring people together and you give them a purpose," says Blume, "you come together and you chat and it's just easy come, easy go."

Who knows what kind of peace quilt could be woven with all those unused penguin jumpers?

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