Charitable and Voluntary Activities
Since 1998, Portillo has been a Commissioner of the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP). He is a trustee of the charity The Parliamentary Committee Against Anti-Semitism, and also President of DebRA, a British national charity working on behalf of people with the genetic skin blistering condition, Epidermolysis Bullosa (EB).
Portillo is the British chairman of the Anglo-Spanish organisation Tertulias, which organises annual meetings between the two countries. He is also a Vice President of Canning House, the Hispanic & Luso Brazilian Council.
Read more about this topic: Michael Portillo
Famous quotes containing the words charitable and, charitable, voluntary and/or activities:
“She was so charitable and so pitous
She wolde wepe, if that she saugh a mous
Kaught in a trappe, if it were deed or bledde.”
—Geoffrey Chaucer (1340?–1400)
“God protect us from the efficient, go-getter businesswoman whose feminine instincts have been completely sterilized. Wherever women are functioning, whether in the home or in a job, they must remember that their chief function as women is a capacity for warm, understanding and charitable human relationships.”
—Agnes E. Meyer (1887–1970)
“Men are not therefore put to death, or punished for that their theft proceedeth from election; but because it was noxious and contrary to men’s preservation, and the punishment conducing to the preservation of the rest, inasmuch as to punish those that do voluntary hurt, and none else, frameth and maketh men’s wills such as men would have them.”
—Thomas Hobbes (1579–1688)
“Both gossip and joking are intrinsically valuable activities. Both are essentially social activities that strengthen interpersonal bonds—we do not tell jokes and gossip to ourselves. As popular activities that evade social restrictions, they often refer to topics that are inaccessible to serious public discussion. Gossip and joking often appear together: when we gossip we usually tell jokes and when we are joking we often gossip as well.”
—Aaron Ben-Ze’Ev, Israeli philosopher. “The Vindication of Gossip,” Good Gossip, University Press of Kansas (1994)