FYI

Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION

When help just makes things worse

By: John Longhurst

6/02/2010 1:00 AM | Comments: 0

WHEN I heard about the 10 American Baptist church members who were arrested for trying to take Haitian "orphans" out of the country, my mind went back to Zoe’s Ark.

Zoe's Ark, for those who have forgotten, was a small French charity that was formed by a car club in 2004 to help victims of the Southeast Asian tsunami. In 2007, members of the group were arrested in Chad after trying to fly 103 "orphans" from Darfur to France. As it turned out, the children were neither from Darfur nor orphans, and six members of the group were given prison terms for trying to steal local children.

Members of Zoe's Ark defended their actions by saying they were only trying to help, and that Sudanese tribal leaders had told them all the children were Darfuri orphans. But they also admitted they knew almost nothing about the region or its culture. The aborted airlift exasperated legitimate aid organizations working in Chad, who called their plan irresponsible and amateurish.

Like Zoe's Ark, the attempt to rescue children in Haiti by the American church members was also irresponsible, amateurish and, potentially, criminal. But who are these people, and how did they get there?

They are part of a growing phenomenon of church-supported short-term mission and service trips. It is estimated that about 1.6 million North American Christians go to places like Haiti, Mexico or Central America every year to do a week or two of service at orphanages, clinics, churches and other programs.

For churches, this wave of short term volunteerism has changed the face of missions and service. It was once assumed that anyone who wanted to serve as a missionary or a relief and development worker would have specialized university or seminary degrees, cross-cultural training and be willing to serve for periods of two to three years or more with an established organization. Today, anyone with a good heart, a week or two to spare and a few thousand dollars for airfare and hotels can go to the developing world with their church or school to do good at one of the tens of thousands of charities that count on them for donated time and money.

It is rare for people on these trips to get into the kind of trouble facing the American Baptists today. But the potential is always there; since most of the groups the short-termers work with are not mainstream relief and development organizations -- groups that invest time and energy to make sure thing are done legally and properly, both from an ethical and financial perspective -- they cannot be sure that everything they are involved in is legitimate or, as in this case, whether the children they are helping are really orphans.

The trips are also a terrible investment. The thousands of dollars North Americans spend on airfare and hotels would be much better put to use employing local people, and the money would go further, too. A study of short-term service trips in Guatemala following Hurricane Mitch in 1998 showed that a house built by Americans cost $30,000, once all the travel and other expenses were factored in, compared to just $2,000 for houses built by local people.

This isn't to say that these short-term volunteers don't mean well, that no good at all arises from their efforts, or that people who go on these trips aren't changed (although recent research shows the changes aren't as deep or long-lasting as proponents hope). But cumulatively and over time, these short-term trips can end up doing the opposite of what these volunteers hope and pray for -- instead of helping poor people rise out of poverty, all this free assistance only ensures that they will stay mired in that condition.

This is especially true in Haiti, which before the earthquake was reported to have over 10,000 charities. All of that free help has led to what Jonah Goldberg called, in the Jan. 23 Free Press, a "poverty culture." Or, as a Haitian man told me during a visit there in 1998, it's turned his country into "a nation of beggars."

Of course, Haiti needs all the help it can get today. But if the country is going to overcome this disaster, Haitians need the opportunity to do most of the work. We need to be kind enough to help, but we also need to be kind enough to know when our help will only make things worse, and prove detrimental to their long term well-being.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition February 6, 2010 H11

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