So You Want To Help The Poor?

What kind of help do they want?

“What do you want to be when you grow up?”

A common question children get asked in some places. But it makes no sense to others.

According to When Helping Hurts ( Book by Brian Fikkert and Steve Corbett) rich and poor people don’t describe poverty the same way.

Rich people say it is a lack of food, money, water, medical, housing, etc.

They focus on the material.

Whereas poor people emphasize shame, inferiority, powerlessness, fear, voicelessness, etc.

More social and psychological than material.

I know the bad that can come from a medical misdiagnosis. You end up not getting better, sometimes getting worse. The authors say this is what happens in poverty alleviation.

The rich people don’t know what the actual problem is (but they think they do). The result is they might go about solving it the wrong way.

I skim read this article, about how we equate having a life with having a choice. It reminded me of a weekend away I went on in my first year of university.

At that stage of life, it is all so exciting to choose a career and work towards it. But it is also stressful to make that kind of big decision.

The retreat speaker reminded us that most people in the world don’t have this stress. There is no choice, it’s about survival.

April 2019