Fishing Poles and Fishing Lessons Are Not Enough

Up until recently, the member charities with whom I work were largely given to demonstrating God’s love through the offer of care for the poor, the diseased, the displaced, and the orphaned via material gifts: food, medicine, orphanages, water wells, and etc. Over the last few years, however, there has been a major shift in our corporate Way of Being-- how we choose to move through the worlds in which we work and serve--whereby we are thinking and acting in terms of helping others to generate value for themselves: specifically by helping individuals to create micro-enterprises. (Small businesses.) As I understand the message of Christ, the former Way of Being is a necessary intervention in the lives of the destitute that are living on the precipice of death, while the latter is the offering of a relationship that facilitates converting slaves into sons, and sons into fathers.

Slaves are at the mercy of their masters: e.g., poverty, victim-mentality, cultural norms that restrict and repress, etc.

Sons have a familial relationship whereby they are being trained to generate value for themselves, serve others with that value, and to steward the value they are generating.

Fathers—sons who are have matured into Fathers—are not only generating value, they are facilitating the creation of value in others.

I take the above metaphor of slaves, sons and fathers from St John (I Jn 2) who wrote of children, sons, and fathers. Children know their sins are forgiven and, thus, are free of guilt, no longer being slaves to manipulation and control; Sons, being more mature, are strong in the Word and in waging war against darkness; and Fathers who see “as from the beginning,” i.e., they have a very long-term perspective.

Within the context of charity work in Africa (and elsewhere) I assert that the mindset of many of those working for Charitable Agencies and Donor Nations which insist upon treating the African as a helpless child, in point of fact, turns him into a slave who either does not know that he can live free (that Christ gives us the freedom to create value and steward what has been created) or, worse, has become an Institutionalized slave who, when offered freedom, chooses the safety and security of slavery. Consequently, it is not so much that Africans failed to take advantage of the largess of Donor and Institutions by establishing free and prosperous societies, but that the methodologies of the Donors either established or strengthened the bonds of slavery.

So why doesn’t the African push back and break away from this slavery?

Part of the answer is found in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, where he places survival as the most basic. When confronted with destitution and impending disaster, we humans will forgo most any ethical standard and accept any denigration or degradation of our self-worth so as to survive. If I, or worse, my children are facing unbearable suffering, I will beg-borrow-steal-lie-cheat to help us survive.

Now consider the methodologies of Donor Nations, UN Agencies and many of the larger NGOs (obviously this is a generalization and is not the case with each and every Agency): when we look closely, they are tied into the survival mentality, which actually helps keep the African in slavery. If I have to be a child or a slave to get “you” to elicit sympathy and give me money to survive, what do you think I am going to do? And because I am clueless as to my own God-given capacity for creating value for myself, if I do see or hear about “freedom” or “self-government,” I think to myself, “There won’t be anyone around to help me survive? No, thank you. Besides, playing the pitiful victim generates value for both of us, as you use my dire circumstances to raise money and I use them to get your money so as to survive: talk about a win-win situation!”

Of course, many will say, “Wait just a minute. We offer more than survival rations: we have created jobs, we have helped to build schools, we have loaned large sums of money to these nations toward developing an infrastructure conducive to commerce and increased prosperity. We weren’t seeking to enslave but to empower these people!”

For the sake of argument, let us accept that everyone involved has the best of intentions. So what? If what I am producing and reproducing are more and more slaves, my motives are irrelevant in light of the ever-increasing slavery.

By the way, those Institutions and Agencies that are now pulling out of Africa because they at least get that their trillions of dollars in alleged altruistic donations were basically wasted, still don’t see the larger picture: a large portion of the failure was in methodologies that confirmed to the African that he is a child or a slave who cannot generate value on his own. How in the world can I lay all the blame upon the men and women who danced to the music I was playing? If I wanted a different dance, I should have come up with some different music!

A Shift in Methodology
Which brings me back to the small group of charities that are now seeking to serve in such ways that facilitate Africans in learning how to create value in and for themselves and others. One of the chief methodologies that sets us apart is the kind of training we offer our micro-enterprise partners. While many other agencies provide training in technical skill, bookkeeping, pricing, packaging and marketing, we add to such training a component that makes all the difference when planning for success: the transformation of the individual’s character.

If we “Give a woman a fishing pole and teach her to fish,” and she is terrified of admitting mistakes for fear of being “wrong” and all that goes with the stigma of being “wrong” in her culture …

If we “Give a man a fishing pole and teach him to fish,” and he believes that fishing one-hour a day is sufficient effort …

If we “Give a woman a fishing pole and teach her to fish,” and she believes her failure to catch any fish today has nothing to do with being at the lake at the wrong time of the day but, rather, that she is a victim of her fishing pole …

If we “Give a man a fishing pole and teach him to fish,” and he believes that, at end of the week, fish or no fish, he is entitled to a “livable wage” …

If we “Give a woman a fishing pole and teach her to fish,” and she is convinced that such learning is beyond her capacity …

The missing component in so many past efforts to raise people out of poverty in Africa has been right here: the failure to facilitate a change in mindset, which encompasses beliefs, attitudes, and the character of those who were being trained.

Rather than challenging the erroneous mindset regarding “mistakes” and being “wrong,” Agencies and their trainers simply said, “TIA.” This Is Africa.

Rather than challenging a poverty-producing attitude toward hard work, trainers simply thought to themselves, “Well, he’s an African, what did I expect?”

Instead of blowing the idea of victimhood to smithereens so as to facilitate respect for self and the ability to create value, trainers acted as if “Once a slave always a slave … these people are incapable of personal responsibility.”

Instead of allowing the individual to be trained and changed by suffering the consequences of poor choices and attitudes, Agencies kept these individuals from learning by rewarding failure. “After all, what can you expect: TIA.”

Rather than teaching the individual about her God-given capacities and placing her in situations where she can discover what she is capable of, trainers subverted her growth in self-respect and belief in her ability to create value by feeling sorry for her and, in turn, gave her a fish. “What can you expect from such a helpless women, after all.”

Without interrupting and intervening in ways that develop a mindset where the individual is now committed to generating value for herself, for taking responsibility for failures and successes, for refusing to ever think of herself as a slave or a victim again, and insisting that others do the same, no matter how much money we give her and how many skills we teach her, she will fail to ever achieve the kind of efficaciousness in generating value that she is capable of.


Copyright, Monte E WIlson, 2008