Shift also needed with humanitarian volunteers

Many Americans and Europeans, especially church groups, send volunteers to impoverished areas in order to volunteer services such as home building. This has become kind of a sacred cow type of belief, where people think they have to do this and only this in order to be charitable and of service. As a result, while much good has been done, there is a misdirection of how such good motivations could and should be truly put to good use.

There have been some articles touching on this in recent days. For example an article mentioned how pointless walls are built, how a church gets painted and painted over and over by each wave of charitable volunteer or tourist, and how none make a dent in poverty. (Now I am not talking about the fantastic groups like Doctors Without Borders who establish ongoing presence and service and are irreplaceable in their charity and service). I'm talking about the one time family, church or tourist based efforts where an ad hoc group goes to a foreign location in order to "do a good deed."

Here is what ought to be done instead. These groups should sponsor the development of those skills in the local villages themselves. For example, instead of going to slap some paint on homes during a charitable "vacation," organize the training of some youths in the village to learn the painting trade and outfit them with tools and supplies. That way you are truly changing the lives of people in an ongoing and meaningful way. Imagine if instead of banding together and trooping to a village in order to paint some houses if instead there was a charitable organization that "planted," just like planting a church, the ability in that village to do the home building and maintenance trades instead of what the volunteers had planned to do themselves on a one time basis? The organization and its affiliated individuals, ad hoc groups, churches and communities could donate funding, expertise and supplies in order to provide for, let's say, a young person to learn plumbing. Or an elder who knows the trades can be given supplies and support in order to perform his or her craft and teach it to the young ones. I'd rather put MY money down to outfit a native resident of the area to have a job with a trade that he or she can earn a living off of and sponsor free usage of that trade in the community. That is truly the application of the miracle of the loaves and fishes, from the few to providing for the many.

I'd rather see some earnest youngster, say, a Mormon, or an evangelical teenager, or whoever, consider the fact that service does not mean you have to put in "face time." I hate to be blunt but that is often what it is. Families kind of use the foreign locations to feel meaningful, imitating Christ and so forth, but they bring with them limited expertise and then they do whatever project is "available" right on the spot, and then they leave, until the next group troops along. That really is a dumb sacred cow. I'd rather stay home but work via computer, contacts and through local advocates to establish a permanent capability in the target location. I'd rather have painters, carpenters, plasterers, plumbers, electricians, water and sewage engineers, etc be established via my foundation and my efforts so that they can do the work and reap the benefits every day to raise their own communities up, rather than take whatever the largess of tourists and volunteers bring for a few days.

Think about two religious models to follow. One is that Jesus did not walk around passing out fish to fishermen. Jesus accompanied the fisherman and encouraged them to do what they do naturally (even giving them hints about good places to fish! *wink*). Charitable volunteers should resist the urge to "go in and do it for them" and instead promote using good use of capitalist principles the training and supplying of trades and craft workers to do the charitable work using native workers in their native communities.

Second, there is the hierarchy of blessings that is a Jewish tradition to ponder. It goes something like this. It is a blessing to give to someone poor one on one a donation of what they need. It is even better to do it anonymously so that you are not extracting pride from your largess. And then the best (as in the old saying "it is better to teach a man how to fish"), giving the person the capability to generate the means of livelihood and to perform charity on his or her own behalf is the best. Think of what could be done if humanitarians emphasized less the ad hoc "service" visit and instead partnered with someone like a paint manufacturer in order to outfit and supply a local person who can perform both commercial and charitable work in his or her own community. THAT is fulfillment of the Jewish tradition of blessing that I've paraphrased here, and also is much more consistent with the model of Christ (Jesus would not thought much about charitable tourism).

If you are resisting this idea you have to be prayerful about why you are having trouble detaching yourself from wanting to see the grateful faces of the people you are "helping."

Think about it.