Hacker News Books

My wife and I 'When Helping Hurts' last year, and I'd highly recommend it as a resource for thoughtful volunteerism. Beyond the content, I thought it had the best set of questions/exercises I've seen in a book of this kind.

There's a book I'm just beginning, When Helping Hurts[1], that dives into this subject deeper. Complicated for sure.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/When-Helping-Hurts-Alleviate-Yourself/...

You should read the book “When Helping Hurts” to get a better idea of the harm you can cause by just giving poor people money without addressing root causes and more systematic issues.

In fact, I will buy you a copy if you are interested.

Have you read When Helping Hurts? It's a really good exploration of this dichotomy of blame between the people and the systems.

In truth, both are broken.

Not to diminish your good intentions and the obviously profitable experiences that you've gained, but I would be hesitant to recommend voluntourism without any qualifications.

There are obviously benefits to the people who go, but there is also potential of harm to the communities visited -- more so than just the usual tourism -- in the name of doing good. Skilled/educational trips like medical missions that provide relief and sustainable/appropriate skills transmission to providers in the local community tend to be the most positive/neutral, but efforts like helping to rebuild schools, etc. with volunteers who have no specific expertise tend to be problematic.

(issues include depriving livelihood from local builders, badly rebuilt buildings owing to lack of skill that have to be rebuilt, creating a culture of dependency, damage caused to the dignity of providers in local communities, the constant impermanency of relationships can especially affect children in the local community, etc.).

Many thoughtful missions organizations are aware of these issues and try to plan missions trips that mitigate such harm. There's a book called "When Helping Hurts" [1] that guides a lot of the new thinking in this space. Again good intentions are laudable, and we should not be dissuaded from doing good in the world, but acting with discernment and wisdom ensures that actual good, and not harm, is done in the visited communities.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_Helping_Hurts