Wonderful Book: When Helping Hurts, Part I

I recently read a book I had skimmed a few months ago: When Helping Hurts, by Steve Corbett and

Brian Fikkert.  It's the most sensible book I know of on the role of privileged people in poverty alleviation and feels a lot like being inside the head of my dear friend and fellow Yo Ghana! board member Mr. Brando Akoto.

When Helping Hurts is written from a Christian perspective, so one of their central concepts is that everyone is broken and poor in some respect.

This brokenness or poverty has two major consequences for development work.

Since one aspect of our brokenness is arrogance, particularly if we have reason to think that we are powerful or superior, many of us are unaware of our poverty and brokenness.  We are apt to think of our material wealth as a manifestation of superiority.  More tellingly, perhaps, we are often unprepared to recognize and deal with our blind spots and limitations.  Our lack of humility is often crippling, because it keeps us from being able to recognize and address our weaknesses.

Second, a broad definition of poverty helps one to see that wealthy people can be poor.  Part of what intrigued me right away about Ghanaian schools was their richness in resiliency and relationships.  I discerned those same strengths among ordinary Ghanaians in all walks of life; their determination and social skills were, by American standards, extraordinary and, for me, inspiring.  

Before well-meaning people try to help those with far fewer material resources, then, we are well advised to: 1) Bear in mind our limitations and lack of knowledge--and to remember that the more we learn, the more we will learn about what we don't know; 2) That, as many Peace Corps Volunteers like to say, we are likely to gain more than we receive, that people who are poor in material goods are often, perhaps by necessity, rich in social skills and moral character.