Full Circle Associates

This was too good not to link to from What An African Woman Thinks. I struggle constantly with the tensions inherent in wanting to "do good" or "hel.p" I worry that too often I, in my personal ignorance, despite best intentions, do nothing, or worse, do harm. Take a read...

"It’s great that you want to do something meaningful with the little (or considerably more than a little) extra that you’ve worked so hard to accumulate. It’s great that you see that you can use your wealth to make the world a better place for folk less fortunate (term used loosely) than yourself.

But.

How about shifting your deliberations about what ails the poor from glitzy, virtually inaccessible conference venues in countries that are notorious for their tight-fistedness with visas for people originating from certain parts of the world that shall remain unnamed but implied, and bring the dialogue to the poor, in their communities?

Helping The ‘Less Fortunate’101:

COURSEWORK

*Let the ‘less fortunate’ speak

*Listen

*Really listen

*Ditch the concerts that marginalise the stakeholders. (Emotionally-charged pause. OK, Seriously??)

*Give the community a stake in the solution

*Refrain from offering pre-packaged, one-size fits all, ship-them-by the container-load solutions.

*Understand that sometimes it’s not about the right way to do things or the wrong way to do things but about the way you do things and the way they do things

*Recap of listen, really, really listen

*Understand that the ‘less fortunate’ are not just a statistic on a piece of paper in a file in a room in a building, somewhere. They are people with minds and hearts and dreams and aspirations

*Understand that no matter where the solutions come from, if the community that is supposed to benefit from them doesn’t take ownership of them, then you will fail ‘Helping The Less Fortunate’ 101.

*Listen

That's my mantra for today. Listen.

Tags: NPtech