TITLE: What might be wrong with helping the Poor? An Illustrative Zoom Author: Arrey Mbongaya Ivo Copyrights2014 African Centre for Community and Development. All Rights Reserved. http://youtube.com/user/AfricanCentreforCom http://www.africancentreforcommunity.com https://www.facebook.com/pages/African-Centre-for-Community-and-Development/103686769685856

1. What might be wrong with helping the poor?
An illustrative zoom
Author:
Arrey Mbongaya Ivo
African Centre for Community and Development
Http://www.africancentreforcommunity.com
Http://youtube.com/user/AfricanCentreforCom
Copyrights2014 African Centre for Community
and Development. All Rights Reserved

2. Introduction
● Helping the poor is humane. However knowing
how, when and where to help the poor has got
so many challenges and ramifications.
● Do the poor want your help?
● Are they poor or have they just been painted as
poor?
● Are your perceptions of help illusive, real or
useless?
● Do you know the poor? Are the poor the same
in all the corners of the earth?

3. Introduction continues...
● Are you more skillful or knowledgeable than the poor
you want to help?
● Is the instrument of help considered as an abuse on
the person or dignity of the poor?
● Is the help good enough? Can your contributions in
the lives of the poor or in a community amount to an
effective positive transformation in the lives of the
poor?
● Are you driven by gains, fame, paternalism or a single
story narrative as coined by Chimamanda Adichie in
“The Danger of a Single Story”?

4. Introduction continues....
All these questions are necessary to consider in
order that helping the poor can be what it is and
not the imaginations of an unconnected
paternalistic individual or institution wishing to
do good without the devices, the skills,
resources or knowledge to deliver.
Without knowledge, skills or without the right set
of mind and understanding of the environments
that poor people live in, many well intentioned
instruments to alleviate poverty will fail (Gow
and Morss, 1988, Cusworth and Franks, 1993).

5. Introduction Continues...
Without knowledge of the assets and capabilities that
poor people have set aside to survive (Chambers and
Conway, 1992) overtime, many instruments tend to fail
as the poor are looked upon as a passive tribe and
which they are not (De Haan and Zoomers, 2003,
2005) .
They fail because the poor are considered weak and
without skills via skewed paternalistic lenses leading to
provision of services that are top-down, disconnected
from the environments of the poor and somewhat
without the moral underpinnings necessary for local
ownership and support.

6. Introduction Continues....
These instruments fail because they serve the
interests and the single story narratives of their diverse
providers and the not the beneficiaries.
They fail because there is disconnection between the
intention of doing good and the realities or contexts as
intimated by Ivan Illich in “To Hell with good Intentions”
or by Jacqueline Novogratz in “The Blue Sweater”
page 73, of differentiating what works and what does
not. They fail because the single story drilling makes
the helpers incapable of understanding local contexts,
unconsciously blind to realities and illusive as
intimated by this author in a poem : “winged and made
to fly in the fantasy of a fly is bigger than an elephant”

7. Illustration 1: Artwork: Beyond my Colour
Fences by Arrey Mbongaya Ivo
Beyond my Colour Fences by Arrey Mbongaya Ivo

8. Explanation of “Beyond my Colour
Fences”
● The artwork reveals that people grow with paradigms of their
immediate tutorship. What they are told about themselves, their
importance, their histories as well as what they are told of
others and their capabilities.
● Therefore people act from a combination of influences including
family, schools, television, role models, culture or even
propaganda hence function within “colour fences” which might
be different from the world and realities beyond.
● As with the art work if you look beyond the colourful stripes or
pillars there is much to discover including vegetation, skies and
even gloom at the corners. Hence helping the poor may go
wrong if providers cannot discard their colourful fences to peep
into the lives and needs of the poor.

9. Illustration 2: Artwork “Life Stories
and Tasks” by Arrey Mbongaya Ivo
Life Stories and Tasks by Arrey Mbongaya Ivo.

10. Explanation of “Life Stories and
Tasks” by Arrey Mbongaya Ivo
The art work is a depiction of various life experiences and the tasks
or instruments needed to fulfill these lives. The tasks and the
materials are colourful toy bricks which vary in shapes or content from
box to box.
Thus even-though men are equal by their humanity they are
challenged by their resources and their tools or building blocks. The
poor are not poor because they are lazy or choose to be but because
in many ways their own boxes have different contents to others.
Even when the work is looked as a series of steps to climb to the top
there are lanes that have just three steps and others have four. Then
there are potentially unseen boxes with contents that are in the dark
spaces of the work that reiterate the fact that not all human stories
and experiences are known hence we cannot approach things from a
single story narrative. The single story narrative is thus not inclusive
and participatory.

11. The Way Forward
● Include the poor in the design and implementation of projects
aimed at poverty alleviation not to fail. Inclusion leads to
participation and local ownership. Inclusion goes beyond
window dressing. They must be equipped with power, authority
and resources to be effective partners.
● Separate the intention to do good from the capacity of doing
good.
● Separate your single story from the many stories of others in
order to approach helping others from an informed and strategic
way.
● Most poor people are not victims or poor because they lack
management skills. They sometimes lack means but in many
instances they are deprived of means by many stakeholders
including some apparent helpers.

12. The Way Forward
● Monetary indicators are not the only determinants of
well-being. There are objective and subjective
determinants of well-being. Some are culturally based
or even subject to climatic realities, needs or
geography or even tastes.
● Researching to understand the different dimensions
and interpretations of poverty (Hall and Midgley, 2004)
is vital in designing flexible, participatory, inclusive and
bottom top approaches for poverty alleviation and
development. Poverty alleviation becomes based on
informed data and needs hence more effective.

13. Conclusion
Poverty Alleviation schemes are humane and moral. They must not
be driven by misunderstanding of the poor and their environments or
their needs.
They must not be driven by a single story narrative by providers in
order to be inclusive and bottom-top.
There is a difference between wanting to do good and good itself and
between global values and sometimes specific needs. While it is
positive to want to do good, working with people and organizations
that understand the poor and local realities is vital. Working with the
poor is a bonus in fair-based partnerships. Poverty alleviation is not a
trivial device for entertainment nor should it be a window to exploit the
poor.

14. Bibliography and References
Arrey, M.I. 2010 How Africa should approach her Sustainable Development. Published online in
http://www.slideshare.net/ArreyCup/how-africa-should-approach-her-sustainable-developmentppt-by-arrey-mbongaya-ivo-5028298
de Haan, L. and Zoomers, A. (2003): Development geog­raphy
at the crossroads of livelihood and globalization. In: Journal of Economic and
Social Geography 94 (3), 350–362. DOI: 10.1111/1467-9663.00262
-2005): Exploring the frontier of livelihood research. In: Development and Change 36 (1), 27–47. DOI: 10.1111/j.0012-155X.2005.00401.x
Gow, D. D., y E. R. Morss. 1988. The notorious nine: Critical problems in project implementation. World Development 16(12): 1399-1418.
Toner A, Franks T. 2006. Putting Livelihoods Thinking Into Practice: Implications for Development Management Public Admin, Dev. 26,
81-92 Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com) DOI: 10.1002/pad.395
The Danger of a Single Story-Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Published online in http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9Ihs241zeg
To Hell with Good Intentions by Ivan Illich
The Blue Sweater by Jacqueline Novogratz
Winged and Made to Fly by Arrey Mbongaya Ivo Published online in http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uN4x8sQ9swc
Copyrights2014 African Centre for Community and Development.