The last couple of posts here have focused on the technology we use to connect with one another. It can be a full-time job, keeping up with the new and often amazing tools that facilitate those connections.
But always and inevitably my attention turns back to what it is we’re connecting for. What is it we hope to accomplish with this ever-expanding ability to share our ideas and our money and our influence? What relationships are we looking to build with those we can now more easily reach? Especially where we’re connecting with people and communities in far away places, with cultures and economic conditions much different than our own, what influences do we want to have, and how do we want to be influenced, as it becomes easier and easier to connect with the more remote corners of our world?
The other day I was introduced by Tom Munnecke’s Good Ancestor Principles workshop, to David Ellerman’s ideas on helping people. “Helping” is one reason to connect with people and a key element in the work I do in the name of ‘international development.’
I really like the way Ellerman defines the role of helping. Rather than framing it as delivering assistance, or even teaching another how to assist themselves, he frames it as encouraging and amplifying the good that’s already going on within the other’s world.
The role of the “helping agency,” he says, is to catalyze, foster, and otherwise amplify 1) positive things that are already happening and 2) any experimentation that’s already happening for the purpose of improving upon what’s already going on.
Some excerpts from his 2002 paper on helping as delivering ”Autonomy-Respecting Assistance“ that I particularly like:
The helping approaches of engineering and benevolence fail because they either override or undercut the autonomy of the doers.
There is no “outside in” way to deliver “inside out” change [see Covey 1990]. Some major agencies show their failure to understand this point by labeling their education programs as “Learning Delivery Programs.” An agency can deliver training or teaching—and learning may or may not take place, but an agency cannot “deliver learning.”
The role of the autonomy-respecting cognitive helper is not to teach or disseminate knowledge but is the Socratic role of being a midwife or facilitator of a learning process on the part of the doers.
In this model of decentralized social learning, the role of the center or helper is that of a broker fostering horizontal learning in the form of visits, secondments, twinning arrangements, or consulting contracts between successful doers and would-be doers.
The alternative to the helper supplying motivation is where the helper finds virtue afoot on its own. “In these situations, the donor would set himself the task of rewarding virtue (or rather, what he considers as such) where virtue appears of its own accord.” [Hirschman 1971, 204] The helper would try to catalyze linkages, maximize demonstration effects, and in others ways to amplify the found small beginnings of positive change.
So if we wanted to create or join a “helping agency” (aka individual or organizational social action initiative), Ellerman’s ideas add a level of complexity to the already complex process of recognizing a need, delivering funds, and adding sticks and carrots to encourage that the help has the desired impact. But I’m inclined to agree with Ellerman that this kind of assistance-delivery is what is needed.
When I get excited about P2P techno-activity, it’s because those tools help us to understand one another — to more easily and directly share our ideas and money and other measurements of value with one another — and the more we do that, the less complicated and more intuitive and common sensical Ellerman’s model of assistance will be.
Additional reading: David Ellerman’s latest book, Helping People Help Themselves: From the World Bank to an Alternative Philosophy of Development Assistance (2005)
5 Comments
February 7, 2008 at 8:54 am
Hey Christine! Thanks for the interesting ideas, I love the idea of a “helping” agency! I wonder if you might consider creating a glossary for some of the more ambiguous jargon in this post (and I assume others)? As you’re gaining knowledge and we’re reading, some of the language isn’t totally clear. Ex: P2P techno-activity. And you could now add assistance-delivery and link it to this post?
Love what you’re doing!!
February 8, 2008 at 5:43 am
Great post.
I’m a huge fan of The Uplift Academy, and its network of truly visionary thinkers.
The way I see it, micro-philanthropy has a role to play in amplifying what’s already working. As individuals increasingly use social media to donate directly to local community based organizations, the role for western BINGOS (big international non-governmental organizations) is reduced.
Let’s look for examples of organizations in the global south that are doing great work. The ones that know how to use social media to get their message out will help international donors bypass the BINGOS. As micro-philanthropists connecting directly to community based organizations, we can assist in scaling-up (amplifying) the work these groups are already doing.
I’m in South Africa at the moment, discovering a huge range of inspiring local initiatives to overcome difficult situations.
For example, have a look at ASAP — African Solutions to African Problems.
http://www.africansolutions.org/
February 10, 2008 at 8:31 pm
Hey Lexi,
Thanks for the suggestion, and yikes, I thought I was successfully avoiding jargon! Shows you how insidious it can be…
Where these two examples are concerned, though, it’s just a matter of my complicating things unintentionally.
Instead of saying “assistance-delivery” I could have just said “helping.”
And instead of “P2P techno-activity” I could have just said “peer-to-peer technology.”
Honestly, I want to be using language that’s completely accessible. Thanks for helping me keep it real
February 10, 2008 at 8:44 pm
Peter,
Thanks for the comment and the link to ASAP — great to know what they’re doing.
I agree, there’s a *huge* opportunity for microphilanthropy to amplify what’s working well at the local level in communities like the ones impacted by ASAP.
And groups like ASAP and the people they benefit have a greater opportunity than ever before to communicate clearly about the kind of help they really want and need (I’m thinking here about Peter Brock’s work that you wrote about; link below), and not to just be the “passive grateful recipients” of any kind of aid that comes their way.
http://www.socialactions.com/they-come-in-the-name-of-helping
September 10, 2008 at 2:53 am
This is a great discussion. Thanks for the info about that book, Christine.
I have some suggestions about organizations doing things that work: BRAC (just won the prestigious Conrad Hilton humanitarian prize), Barefoot College (training barefoot solar engineers for much of the developing world), Honey Bee Network (finding and helping rural innovators in India), and some models that work – APOC (African program for control of onchocerciasis), which has an effective model of community-directed treatment that is proving effective for other things apart from river blindness. (In fact, I am working on a book about new conversations in international development now.)
For some examples of what works, see http://hopebuilding.pbwiki.com.
And for a challenge to find a solution. RUTFs (ready to use therapeutic foods) could save as many as 75% of the world’s severely malnourished children – but there are not enough factories in Africa producing them. The French company that developed the formula for Plumpy’nut, the best-known RUTF, apparently is willing to share the formula with any NGO who asks. But there needs to be more governments in Africa, more NGOs working in Africa, and even maybe the US and Canadian governments putting a priority on RUTFs. How often have we had a solution in international development that works so effectively? People like MSF call it a miracle, and say RUTF is like an “antibiotic” for hunger.
Rosemary