By Emma Clayton

SEVERAL years ago I accompanied an aid worker to a gipsy camp in rural Bosnia, where people were so poor they had to rummage on rubbish tips for scraps.

Moving among the cramped shacks occupied by young families, we distributed clothing donated by churches and schools, and food we’d bought from a local supermarket.

Many children in the camp were barefoot, and I will never forget the smile that lit up a little boy’s face when I kneeled down to put a pair of over-sized boots on his grubby feet. Most designer-obsessed children his age wouldn’t have been seen dead in these clunky, old-fashioned boots, but to him they were everything. He clomped about, clutching sweets I handed to him and his siblings.

His desperate mother held my hand tightly, grateful for the donations of toiletries and basic cooking items. At that moment I wanted to empty the entire contents of my handbag and tell her: “Here, take it.”

Because that’s how you feel when you encounter poverty like that. You want to give what you can.

Seeing children scratching around in poverty is particularly sickening. When I returned from Bosnia, I bristled with rage at the false modesty of celebrities claiming to do their bit for charity, while wearing shoes so expensive they would’ve funded a new home for one of those gipsy families.

York Press:
Madonna has confirmed she has adopted twin sisters from Malawi

I later visited an orphanage in Ukraine, home to children from families too poor to look after them. Some had spent their young lives begging on the streets, others had been dumped at a local railway station and told to “find the orphanage”. The children slept in overcrowded dormitories. Their toilets were holes in the ground. The orphanage was trying to raise £20,000 for a new toilet block - the cost of a day’s shopping for some “humanitarian” A-listers.

For reasons I didn’t really understand, these children were social outcasts, regarded as having mental disabilities and brushed under the carpet. Aged 17, with no qualifications, they were expected to leave the orphanage and find their own way.

Yet most youngsters I met there were bright and inquisitive. If I’d been in a position to offer any of them a home, I would have done. The orphanage did its best but the brutal reality was that in just a few years, while still teenagers, these bright youngsters would probably drift into prostitution, crime and addiction.

It was a different story at another orphanage I visited, a few miles away. This was for younger children and was clean, light and spacious, with a fountain in the garden and play areas filled with toys. Framed photos of smiling children adorned the walls, which I learned was for the benefit of wealthy visitors from America and Europe keen to adopt an infant.

While I found it unsettling that conditions in these orphanages were so different, I knew the children chosen for adoption were the lucky ones. Those left behind would later be moved to the other orphanage.

This week’s reported High Court decision allowing Madonna to adopt twin girls from a Malawi orphanage will no doubt be met with much sanctimonious handwringing in the media. I think she is to be applauded.

Surely, if a child has chance of a good life in another country, it’s better than being stuck in care in a place offering little social welfare.