Doing Them Well By Being With Them First: The Power of Presence in Effective Charity
James Whitford
Founder & CEO
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If you’ve attempted to help others out of poverty for any length of time, chances are you’ve run into a question that no amount of concerted effort will make go away. It’s one that’s plagued just about everyone good-hearted and giving enough to try to make a difference:
“Is this doing anyone any good?”
Handouts lead to more handouts — to the same people. More handouts lead to expectations — from the same people plus others they tell about the stuff they’re getting. Expectations eventually lead to dependency that traps them in a hopeless cycle of enslavement to “what others can do for me.”
Twenty years into poverty alleviation, I’ve seen it — and seen it everywhere. That’s why I’ve shared my thoughts in my new book, The Crisis of Dependency: How Our Efforts to Solve Poverty Are Trapping People In It And What We Can Do To Foster Freedom Instead.
In the following excerpt, I share one of the most valuable lessons we can learn in moving away from that question so we turn our well-intentioned effort into truly effective charity. As I point out, doing so means moving one step closer to bringing justice to those we serve:
Every few months, a handful of students from our men’s long-term recovery program spend a week with me and my wife. We have morning devotions together, eat together, work outdoors together, and enjoy time fishing, throwing horseshoes, or laughing around a campfire. These men all meet the standard definition of poverty, but there’s no sign of that during our week together. It’s seven days of sacrifice, effort, and solidarity rooted in compassion, responsibility, and relationship. These means to an end become an end in itself — justice. This isn’t easy but it’s beautiful. It is to desire being with more than doing for.
Bruce gets this. He lives in White Clay, Nebraska, with his wife, Marsha. They founded a ministry to help the Lakota Natives on the reservation in Pineridge, South Dakota. This particular reservation is one of the most impoverished areas in the Western Hemisphere, rivaled only by Haiti.
Once, Bruce and I were in his truck heading north from White Clay to Pineridge, and he was lamenting the constant barrage of short-term mission trips. He said something I’ve remembered for years: “James, I want people to stop coming and doing for the Lakota people. I want them to come and be with the Lakota people.” After living there for years, Bruce and Marsha have learned that good intentions often result in a lot of activity, but that doing for rather than being with is a means that falls woefully short of justice.
Bruce and Marsha have the hearts we all need — hearts to trade short-term, long-distance mission trips for short-distance, long-term relationships. And it is in those relationships that we get close enough to understand the real need. There are no “distant” fixes for poverty…
The last time I visited the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, I was there to see one specific name on a wall of 58,318 names memorialized for the ultimate sacrifice they paid on the battlefield: William H. Pitsenbarger, or “Pits.”
On April 11, 1966, thirty-five miles east of Saigon, twenty-one-year old United States Airforce pararescueman William Pitsenbarger was lowered through the trees by a helicopter into a firefight where injured Army soldiers were pinned down. He tended to their injuries and helped soldiers into the lift basket. When the helicopter began taking on enemy fire, the pilot called Pitsenbarger to return to the chopper, but Pits waved him on, remaining with the other wounded soldiers, improvising splints and stretchers out of vines and saplings. It’s estimated that he saved sixty men that day before he was shot and killed by a Viet Cong sniper.
Pitsenbarger knew the only way to help these men was to be in the fight with them. Dumping aid from a chopper would have been futile. Sure, they could have simply dropped crates of bandages, tourniquets, and morphine syringes, and then they could have flown away saying they did something for the injured. But Pits knew that in order for each soldier to receive what he really needed, he needed to be with them. Each man required individualized triage for his unique injury.
In other words, to do for them well, he had to be with them first.
The same is true for impoverished individuals. There is no way to shortcut the process of helping people out of poverty. Ultimately, it requires someone who desires “being with” before “doing for.” Unfortunately, our country and communities have a tremendous number of energetic planners who want to do something about poverty more than they want to be with people in poverty. And as long as that inversion persists, the poor will never receive the relational inspiration or the social capital required to escape poverty; they will never be welcomed into circles where new opportunities are born; and they will never be encouraged toward avenues that create wealth.
Help people gain lasting freedom from dependency! For more of these key principles, order your copy of James’ book today.
