Relief - Rehabilitation - Development

I received an email recently that summarizes a few of the main points in the book by Brian Fikkert When Helping Hurts: How to Alleviate Poverty without Hurting the Poor and Yourself. This is a book I’ve read a couple of times now.  I believe it's important and have been praying for wisdom and opportunities to do more development-type ministry and less relief-type ministry.

We all know the Bible talks a lot about the poor, and it clearly teaches us that we are to have compassion for them and help them.  What’s not so clear is exactly how we are to do that.

Here are a few quotes from the email that summarizes the book: 

“Have you ever been part of a mission trip?  Ever ladles soup into the bowls of the hungry?  Sent shoes to an African village or built houses in impoverished neighborhoods?

Have you ever thought about what happens to those people after you leave?  When the soup kitchen closes?  When the shoes wear out, and the villagers are still hungry?” 

Tough scenarios right?

In his book When Helping Hurts, Brian Fikkert "does not intend to discourage donations of time or money geared toward charity, but does want to help charity get better at actually helping those in need."

"When we try to help the poor, we try to make them more like us – materially rich.  But giving hand-outs can be a dangerous and vicious cycle, increasing the pride of the giver and the shame of the recipient, without ever addressing the roots of  poverty. 

"The reason that trying to fix poverty with material things doesn’t work is because material poverty is just a symptom of the root causes of poverty....

Fikkert proposes three broad ways of help the poor – relief, rehabilitation and development.

Relief is what people need right after a crisis, when they are incapable of providing for themselves.  This is the immediate, temporary aid provided in an emergency.  Relief is not a means of treating a chronic condition; if relief work is done with the situation calls for development, then people are enabled to remain unchanged.

Rehabilitation is the process of restoring people and communities to pre-crisis conditions  Material assistance could still be provided, but those in need are directly involved in the process of changing their lot; they exercise their gifts and attributes to contribute toward their own improvement.  Not only will this leave them able to provide for themselves once the aid is gone, but working is also better for people recovering from a crisis, for it gives them fulfillment, worth, and hope for the future.  Working is part of image bearing, which is part of emerging from poverty.

Development is a long-term venture.  It’s about walking with the poor into new arenas that they’ve never been in before and helping them be stewards of what they have.  This process of ongoing change moves people closer to reconciling broken relationships. 

We must reevaluate how much our efforts are helping the poor in the long-run, and how we can make adaptations to help more developmentally.  We must always work to help the poor with the goal, not of making them more like us, but of helping them realize and live out who they are in the image of God.

This information is all taken from an email I received recently from the Institute of Faith, Works and Economics.  I just thought it was important and wanted to share it.  I am praying for more opportunities to get involved with Rehabilitation and Development here in the Dominican Republic. 

Community Development - Urbano Vasquez

Pastor Urbano Vasquez is taking on the project of training an entire neighborhood to handle their trash differently.  Instead of throwing it in the gutter and letting the rainwater carry it to the river, he is raising money to purchase garbage cans, shovels and wheel barrows, and he is recruiting volunteers to carry the trash up the hill to the main road once a week where the garbage trucks can reach it and carry it away. 

Urbano explained that people throw the trash in the holes in the sidewalk.
When it rains, the water flows heavily down the hill to the river below
and carries the trash to the river

His plan is to start with a small part of the neighborhood, communicate with the people living there, showing them the garbage cans and asking them to put their garbage in the cans rather than in the gutter.  He will explain all the reasons why this will help the community be healthier, have fewer problems with rats, cockroaches, mosquitos and disease.  Children will be healthier, miss less school, it will better for the environment and make the neighborhood a more pleasant place to live. 

Urbano plans to ask the residents to pay a small fee of about 25 pesos a month, which will be used to purchase materials and pay the men who do the hauling. 

Urbano has a great vision. He’s heard about this working in other neighborhoods where the conditions are such that garbage truck can’t make it down their street - there is no street down in this valley.  With a big rain, the entire neighborhood floods and some houses are completely covered in water. 

We visited Pastor Urbano who has lived and worked in the neighborhood just up the hill as a pastor and as a teacher in the school he started over 20 years ago, educating students through 6^th grade. 

Some of Urbano's students

The type of change Urbano is hoping for with the garbage cleanup project takes time, but Urbano has demonstrated that he is faithful.  He knows how to persist and persevere through the challenges that present themselves, and will reflect the love of Christ with kindness and patience along the way.  If anyone can cause change in this neighborhood, with the help of God, he can.

Urbano leading us to the neighborhood where he will be working.
Some of his students decided to join us.

In his church they’ve been praying a lot about this project, and I’m excited to see how God unites this community and brings change among them in the months and years to come.

Urbano in his church

Urbano lives on the second story.
His church is below and the school he started is just around the corner.

Urbano's church

A few of the garbage cans that have been donated for the project.

This is another nearby neighborhood that has the same problem.