In the last few years, there has been an increase in corporate social responsibility. More companies are sending their staff to visit and help the poor. This is good. However, before staff members are sent on such trips, it might be good to prepare them with some of the following advice:
1.Ignorance may insult
It is good to find out a little more about the recipient group before deciding to hand out freebies to them. For example, a well-meaning group of people went to help teach English to some teenagers in a poor country. These teenagers were poor in English but were not poor.
The group brought some cheap gifts and made the teenagers fight over these cheap gifts. Needless to say, the teenagers were insulted and were not receptive to the English training.
2.Help may hurt
It is common for company staff to go to a poor community and help build some infrastructure (eg. classroom). The well-intentioned team diligently goes about their job while the whole village watches them. The villagers are usually not allowed to help or even to touch the tools of the team. Though the village has now received a new classroom, the villagers have been made to feel “useless” and “untrustworthy” to even touch the tools.
3.Foreign help is often not sustainable.
The classroom that the foreigners built will eventually need repairs. However, as the locals did not have a hand in it, they do not feel a sense of ownership of the classroom. Often such projects quickly fall into disrepair – as the locals wait for the foreigners to return to repair it. Charity work must be sustainable.