The Tragedy Of Charity

By Peter Greer

Published: September 08, 2008

In 2005, I went to Afghanistan with a group of donors, pastors, and development practitioners. Given the insecurity from the Taliban and the very real threat of bandits on the road to the north, we decided to take a Russian-made helicopter to reach small villages that had not been visibly touched by the outside world.

In one remote village, we were paraded around by the elders who showed us all their "needs." They brought us to a community center that had some minor water damage to the roof. Outside this building, an elder with a full beard waved his finger at me saying, "You must fix this!" I am not a handy individual, yet I'm certain I could have repaired this problem with locally available materials and a few hours of sweat. Our group was amazed at the attitude in the village that seemed to shout that foreigners were responsible for meeting the community's needs.

It seemed that the promise of traditional charity had weakened or even paralyzed local initiative and ownership in this community. As we lifted off, my mind was racing as swiftly as the blades swirling above the Cold War relic. I wondered what "relics" would remain of our assistance and could not help wondering if there was an alternative way for followers of Jesus to address the incredible needs in our world.

In a different small village in a different part of the world, I visited the dimly-lit home of Mama Ndugu, a loan client from Urwego, a microfinance institution in Rwanda. Instead of being paraded around her neighborhood to see its "needs," she proudly showed me all that she and her community had accomplished. She showed me her church and the benches she purchased, she showed me the buzz of activity in the local market, and she even instructed her daughter to run out to buy me a cold Coke. During this visit, she told me about her initial loan of $48 that she used to grow her business making embroidered furniture covers. Now that she was enjoying modest success, she was eager to be a gracious hostess to her American guest. Seated in her dirt-floored home, she asked me to look around and figure out what was different. What I failed to notice were her new tin panels on the roof. "For the first time in my life, my family and I don't get wet during the rainy season!" she proudly proclaimed. As we drank the Coke, she asked for nothing other than my time and friendship.

What made the difference between this woman in Rwanda and the man from Afghanistan? I do not believe the change in attitude resulted from differences in geography, gender, history, or family situation. Rather, I believe the difference resulted from one person believing the lie that he was "too poor to do anything" while another saw that she was too poor to stay the way she was. One looked at his hands and saw nothing while another looked down and saw that these hands had the capacity to improve her life. One had the expectation of foreign charity while another had the expectation of future investment in her business.

If the Church in America wants to make a lasting difference on poverty in the most desperate places of the world, we need to reorient our thinking away from traditional charity to economic development: from hand-outs to hand-ups, from dependency to dignity, from short-term to long-term.

And perhaps most importantly, we need to reorient our thinking from us coming in and "solving the problems of the poor." We might be able to provide sustenance for today, but lasting change is only possible when we partner with the poor in addressing physical and spiritual poverty and equip them to become the change they hope to see.

Peter Greer is the President of Hope International. Prior to his education at Harvard, Peter served as Managing Director for URWEGO Community Banking in Kigali, Rwanda for three years. He also served as a technical advisor for Self-Help Development Foundation (CARE Zimbabwe) in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, and he worked as a microfinance advisor in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

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