Monday, April 22, 2013

Helping Others


Helping others usually starts with all the best intentions. Sometimes we help too much as there is a fine line between helping people and helping people learn how to help themselves. Guiding someone towards the path that reminds them they have the power to help themselves will become a valuable key in their pocket and will unlock infinite doors.

Ownership in their own destiny, choosing their own goals, and finding the resource with which to make this goal a reality are the fundamental building blocks to living a happier healthier life.

So if this is true why do we continue to give handouts without the expectation that the recipient should then learn to better their own life?

There is one organization that seems to have the right idea.

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Medical Ambassadors International (MAI) does not do development. Instead we teach Community Health Evangelism (CHE, pronounced chay) to local individuals, who teach their neighbors, in some of the poorest places in the world. CHE is a plan for individual and community development through physical and spiritual teaching. The people do development for themselves.

  • Local people do it for themselves by:
  • Choosing their own people to be in charge
  • Choosing their own priorities of what to change
  • Choosing their own people to be trained to teach house to house
  • Finding their own resources, and
  • Accomplishing their own goals when and where they choose. Local people own and manage their own plans. We just teach their teachers.
Empowering people to do things for themselves. This liberates locals from the bondage of the welfare mentality.
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So if they are using this school of thought around the world in some of the poorest regions what is keeping you and me for implementing this in our own back yard? How can we empower ourselves, our family members or our neighbors?



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