Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert, When Helping Hurts, 모든 빈곤이 동일한 것은 아니다

 

Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert, When Helping Hurts: Alleviating Poverty Without Hurting the Poor... and Yourself, Chicago, IL: Moody Publishers, 2009 

빈곤은 3가지 단계로 구분된다. (1) 긴급하고 일시적인 도움을 주는 구호 단계, (2) 위기 상황 이전으로 회복하는 재활 단계, (3) 지속 가능한 변화를 도모하는 개발 단계로 나누어진다. 빈곤에 처한 개인과 공동체를 도울 때, 지금 어느 단계에 있는지 분별하는 것이 매우 중요하다. 

개발은 도움을 받는 사람들에게 베푸는 것이 아닌, 함께 하는 것이다. 도움을 주는 자와 도움을 받는 자가 함께 하나님이 지으신 모습을 회복하는 것이다.

Chapter 4. Not All Poverty In Created Equal (p103-105)

A helpful first step in thinking about working with the poor in any context is to discern whether the situation calls for relief, rehabilitation or development. In fact, the failure to distinguish among these situations is one of the most common reasons that poverty-alleviation efforts often do harm.

(1)   “Relief” can be defined as the urgent and temporary provision of emergency aid to reduce immediate suffering from a natural or man-made crisis.

(2)   “Rehabilitation” begins as soon as the bleeding stops; it seeks to restore people and their communities to the positive elements of their precrisis conditions.

(3)   “Development” is a process of ongoing change that moves all the people involved – both the “helpers” and the “helped” – closer to being in right relationship with God, self, others and the rest of creation… Development is not done to people or for people but with people. The key dynamic in development is promoting an empowering process in which all the people involved – both the “helpers” and the “helped” – become more of what God created them to be, moving beyond point 3 to levels of reconciliation that they have not experienced before.

One of the biggest mistakes that North American churches make – by far – is in applying relief in situation in which rehabilitation or development is the appropriate intervention.