1. When Helping
Hurts
How to Alleviate Poverty Without Hurting
the Poor … And Yourself
By Steve Corbett & Brian Fikkert

2. Why do we care?
―Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen:
to loose the chains of injustice
and untie the cords of the yoke,
to set the oppressed free
and break every yoke?
Is it not to share your food with the hungry
and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—
when you see the naked, to clothe him,
and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?
Then your light will break forth like the dawn,
and your healing will quickly appear;
then your righteousness will go before you,
and the glory of the Lord will be your rear guard.‖
Isaiah 58:6-8

3. What Is Poverty?
• The wealthy (us) tend to see poverty as a lack of
material possessions.
• ―Poor people typically talk in terms of shame,
inferiority, powerlessness, humiliation, fear,
hopelessness, depression, social isolation, and
voicelessness.‖ (WHH, p. 53)

4. What Causes Poverty?
If We Believe the Primary Cause of Then We Will Primarily Try to…
Poverty Is…
A Lack of Knowledge Educate the Poor
Oppression by Powerful People Work for Social Justice
The Personal Sins of the Poor Evangelize and Disciple the Poor
A Lack of Material Resources Give Material Resources to the Poor

5. The Real Cause of
Poverty: Broken
Relationships
• Broken Relationship with God – Cause of sin and
suffering
• Broken Relationship with Self – Cause of God-
complex or low self-esteem
• Broken Relationship with Others – Cause of self-
centeredness and exploitation
• Broken Relationship with the Rest of Creation –
Cause of materialism, loss of sense of purpose

6. A Secondary Cause of
Poverty: Broken Systems
• Political System
• Economic System
• Social System
• Religious System

7. Again, What Is Poverty?
―Poverty is the result of relationships that do not work,
that are not just, that are not for life, that are not
harmonious or enjoyable. Poverty is the absence of
shalom in all its meanings.‖
~Bryant L. Myers

8. Who Are the Poor?
• ―…every human being is poor…‖ (WHH, p. 62)
• ―until we embrace our mutual brokenness, our work
with low-income people is likely to do far more
harm than good.‖ (WHH, p. 64)
• We ―sometimes unintentionally reduce poor people
to objects that [we] use to fulfill [our] own need to
accomplish something.‖ (WHH, p. 65)

9. What Is the Solution?
• ―Poverty is rooted in broken relationships, so the solution
to poverty is rooted in the power of Jesus’ death and
resurrection to put all things into right relationship again.‖
(WHH, p. 77)
• ―Poverty alleviation is the ministry of reconciliation:
moving people closer to glorifying God by living in right
relationship with God, with self, with others, and with the
rest of creation.‖ (WHH, p. 78)
• ―Material poverty alleviation is working to reconcile the
four foundational relationships so that people can fulfill
their calling of glorifying God by working and supporting
themselves and their families with the fruit of that work.‖
(WHH, p. 78)

10. How Do Beliefs Tie In?
• Distorted worldview concerning God
o Giving Pachamama the glory for increased crops
• Distorted Worldview Concerning Self
o ―I can‘t hold a job. I‘m not smart enough.‖
• Distorted Worldview Concerning Others
o Caring only about self – robbing and killing are fine.
• Distorted Worldview Concerning the Rest of
Creation
o The world is this way. Nothing will ever change.

11. What Role Do Broken
Systems Play?
• IMF loan help to poor countries forced them to
devalue their currencies and get rid of trade
barriers.
• The US welfare system used to reduce benefits per
dollar earned, encouraging people to stay on
welfare long-term and not to look for work.
• US funding for public education is inequitable,
meaning that up to 300% less is spent per student in
poorer schools than in wealthier schools.

12. What Are the Types of
Poverty Alleviation?
• Relief: ―the urgent and temporary provision of
emergency aid to reduce immediate suffering from
a natural or man-made crisis.‖ (WHH, p. 104)
• Rehabilitation: ―seeks to restore people and their
communities to the positive elements of their pre-
crisis conditions.‖ (WHH, p. 104)
• Development: ―a process of ongoing change that
moves all the people involved – both the ‗helpers‘
and the ‗helped‘ – closer to being in right
relationship wit God, self, others, and the rest of
creation.‖ (WHH, p. 104)

13. When Is Relief
Appropriate?
• Is there really a crisis? If you fail to provide
immediate help, will there really be serious,
negative consequences?
• To what degree was the individual personally
responsible for the crisis?
• Can the person help himself?
• To what extent has the person already been
receiving relief from you or others in the past?
• Relief should be seldom, immediate, and
temporary.

14. Avoid Paternalism
Do not do things for people that they can do for
themselves.
Types of Paternalism
• Resource paternalism
• Spiritual paternalism
• Knowledge paternalism
• Labor paternalism
• Managerial paternalism

15. Start With Assets, Not
Needs
• Identify and mobilize the capabilities, skills, and
resources of the individual or community.
• As much as possible, look for resources and solutions
to come from within the individual or community,
not from the outside.
• Seek to build and rebuild the relationships among
local individuals, associations, churches, businesses,
schools, government, etc.
• Only bring in outside resources when local resources
are insufficient to solve pressing needs.

16. Short-Term Missions
• Short-Term Missionaries Need to Be Humble and
Culturally-Sensitive
o Be aware that the North American concept of time is very
different than in much of the Majority World.
• Time as limited vs. unlimited
• Efficiency vs. relationships
o Be aware that the North American concept of Self is very
different than in much of the Majority World.
• Individualistic vs. Collectivist
• Individual achievement vs. group identity

17. Potential Negative Effects
of Short Term Missions
• ―By definition, short-term missions have only a short time to
‗show a profit,‘ to achieve, pre-defined goals. This can
accentuate our American idols of speed, quantification,
compartamentalization, money, achievement, and success.
Projects become more important than people.‖
~Miriam Adeney
• ―After a short-term team conducts a Bible study in one of
these communities, the children stop attending the Bible
studies of my organization. Our indigenous staff tell me that
the children stop coming because we do not have all the
fancy materials and crafts that the short-term teams have,
and we do not give away things like these teams do.‖
~Anonymous, ―Short-term Missions Can Create a Long-term
Mess‖

18. How Can We Do STMs
Well?
• Work with a host organization that understands the
nature of poverty and practices the basic principles
of appropriate poverty alleviation.
• Make sure that the community wants your help.
• Be open to not going – to sending the money
instead – if that is what the community can really
use.
• Design the trip to be about ‗being‘ and ‗learning‘
as much as about ‗doing.‘
• Avoid paternalism; do not do for people what they
can do for themselves.

19. How Does HOH Practice
These Principles? How
Can We Do Better?
• Do we see poverty as it really is?
o Our Mission is to ―Show Christ‘s love by healing bodies and souls.‖ This
recognizes that the need we see isn‘t just material.
o How do we address this? How can we do better?
• Do we do relief, rehabilitation, or development?
o Outreach clinics can be relief or rehabilitation.
o Plaza work is relief, hopefully building to rehabilitation.
o Public health work is development.
o How can we work toward development?

20. How Does HOH Do?,
continued
• What assets does our community have? Do we
help them use these assets?
o Hospital staff takes initiative to improve the hospital
o We are working with the school to improve the health of the community.
o How can we do better?
• How do we do with community involvement?
o Our staff is primarily Bolivian.
o Volunteers work with Bolivian organizations. Our work at the school was
requested by the school, and teachers help out.
o How can we do better?