Part 3 - Capacity building vs. Creating unnecessary desires

Conversation between Charlotte, Sean & Sarabe

Part 3 Sean:

(This's just part of the series on fighting adverse effects in capacity building: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Key takeouts)


In my opinion, she is partially true as we always need to understand what the people really need, so that we won't provide some unnecessary desire to them. And what's more important, as I have said before, we shouldn't hand in a gift to them, instead we are just a moderator, to inspire them running the program themselves after we left.

Maybe we should develop a system, that when the beneficiaries earn some money becos of the skills they learnt, they have to contribute back to the program. Let's say to contribute time teaching in the centre, or donate money back to let the program sustainable!! Then they won't depend on foreign aids anymore.

Let's think about back to 90s when we don't have computer....and we were simple. When the computer comes, did they increase our hopelessness?? Of course not, since computer allows more efficient and organized working performance. And it allows us to see what's going on in this world, other than just their own community.

I disagree with "being ignorant is better than having desires to strive for", it depends on the "desire" is basic or extra. I really think Education, Literacy, Livelihood, Sanitation, Health, Global citizenship...are basic things, so let them strive for it!! if we ignore their basic desire, it would probably result in more disappointment towards foreign aids!!

I hope we all see how the imbalance this world is. We can take an easy step to just ignore it and live our "happy" life. But it would take much tougher steps with courage to narrow down such imbalance.....So let's find out what really they need and combat it~


Be optimistic about our world!!


Sean