Homework For A Trip

Before last year's trip to Haiti, I read When Helping Hurts by Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert.  It was recommended to our group of mission explorers to warn against well-meant but harmful work by people like us.  It was a good addition to our preparation.  This year there is another book I plan to read, Toxic Charity: How Churches and Charities Hurt Those They Help (And How to Reverse It) by Robert Lupton.  Here is a review of Lupton's book that put it high on my required reading list.

The tough question is, Does charitable relief work take the place of doing justice?  Can we take satisfaction in our missions to help the poor while our public policies and private enterprises undermine capacity building efforts in poor countries?

My experience in community development law and local public policy has helped me see that too often those with economic and political power unilaterally determine what those without it should want and need.  Indeed, is there a time in the history of our country when one can find more examples of the powerful undermining and marginalizing those they can dominate?   Look at who got hit the hardest in the mortgage crisis and what was done about it.  Look at how we deal with medical and health care.  It is not just about how we treat less powerful people; it is that we so blithely place ourselves above and beyond those we deem to need us, helping them in ways that please ourselves.

Anyone who would like to consider this matter further might benefit from a number of articles like this one, and this one.   Jonathan Katz delivers excellent reporting on the earthquake, its aftermath and the failures in the restoration of Haiti.  I highly recommend his book, The Big Truck That Went By.  For a very penetrating look at the country since the Duvalier regime, see Amy Welentz, Farewell, Fred Voodoo, reviewed here.  At some point I'll post some literary work by Haitian authors.

Our return trip at the end of this coming October is planned to engage more directly and personally with partners we met last year in Haiti.  We will work on projects of the Little Brothers and Little Sisters of the Incarnation at tasks they assigned to us.  Specifics of our assignments will be clearer in October.  Yes, a few of us expect to do manual sanitation improvement excavation to reduce the shortage of latrines.  We will take time to listen to our working partners, share stories, tell jokes, sing songs and be present with them in their beautiful mountains.                                                                 

Actually, the trip has already begun.  Those planning to travel, along with others going in spirit, are reading history and current events, initiating correspondence with people we want to meet, and raising funds to bolster the projects of our partners.  Some of us are starting to learn Kreyol so we can listen and speak to Haitians in their language.  (More about that later.)

In these small ways, I hope we are preparing to help with a minimum of harm.  I hope we will be more transforming than charitable.  And I expect to be transformed in that process.
--kjl