Good Intentions Are Not Enough: Why We Fail At Helping Others

by Robin Boon Peng Low

Overview

Disaster strikes, transforming cities and towns into graveyards and wastelands in a matter of minutes. But help is on its way: news channels and social media relay the information to all corners of the globe in real-time, mobilising hundreds of people and organisations to aid. Yet, with standard relief packages regardless of the location, and a lack of effort taken to match volunteers' skills with tasks, just how effective are we at helping others? Many people want to do good, but they like to do it at their convenience. These attempts at helping often fail, and the blame invariably falls on the disaster victims, rather than looking at the suitability of aid provided. Such help, offered without a thorough understanding of the context or the impact of actions, can create situations that leave the victims worse off than before.So how can we create real sustainable impact? Most communities have a lot of unused human capacity. When offering help, many aid providers fail to engage the local communities, thus excluding a critical group of people with the knowledge of local ways and needs.This book elaborates on a simple principle essential to effective aid — Never Help: Engage, Enable, Empower and Connect.It is important that we fully understand the problem before we try to solve it, and who better to help us with solutions than the local community?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9789813200562
Publisher:	Ws Professional
Publication date:	12/14/2016
Pages:	192
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.90(d)

Table of Contents

About the Author v

1 Introduction 1

2 Shifting Morals and Ethics 6

3 Why We Fail at Helping 11

4 Traveling Overseas to Help? Whom are You Helping? 16

5 Scapegoating 20

6 The Dangers of Social Intervention 21

7 The Curse of Exclusion 25

8 Paradox in the Social Sphere 28

9 The Great Convergence 37

10 Empowering State of Mind 54

11 Having More Social Enterprise is Not Enough 56

12 Case Study 1: Rescued Prostitutes 58

13 Case Study 2: Internet Comes to El Limón 60

14 Case Study 3: The Flower Lady 63

15 The Unequal Distribution of Resources 65

16 Giving Done Wrong 68

17 Free Destroys the Economy 69

18 Good Intentions Fail 72

19 Case Study 4: Sanitation Woes 76

20 Case Study 5: They Ate the Chickens 77

21 Case Study 6: Community Involvement Program Gone Wrong 79

22 Social Technology 81

23 Peace Technology, Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship 84

24 CSR 2.0 89

25 Social Intrapreneur 94

26 Social Business 95

27 Design Thinking and Social Innovation 97

28 Social Community 102

29 Crabs versus Turtles 104

30 Risk versus Innovation 108

31 Never Help; Engage, Enable, Empower & Connect 110

32 Case Study 7: Amazon Disaster Registry 117

33 Case Study 8: Disaster Recovery through Art and Tourism 119

34 Case Study 9: Relief B2B (Business to Business) 121

35 Case Study 10: Relief B2V (Business to Village) 124

36 Case Study 11: Relief Enterprise 126

37 Human-Centric Community Empowerment 134

38 Social Capital 139

39 Circular Economy 142

40 Case Study 12: Prison Entrepreneurship 146

41 Case Study 13: Solar Forward 148

42 Case Study 14: The Sustainability Place Of Destiny ("SPOD") 150

43 Jump Start Self-Organizing 156

44 Conscious Consumerism - The Needed Change 161

45 Iteration versus Innovation 165

46 Social Innovation is Not an Easy Task 167

47 Responsibility & Reciprocity 169

48 Conclusion 172

Appendix 174