SO YOU WANT TO HELP THE POOR?

In yesterday's post, I pledged to post as rapidly as possible a book on how to best help the poor. This introduction is the first installment on that pledge. I will post the other chapters
as fast as I can.

(These are not the things that need to be done in the next few days or during this immediate emergency. Rather, this is for the time after that, in which refugees will be moving from getting immediate emergency assistance to trying to normalize their lives. That is when good programs to help them "up and out" of their situation need to kick in. The following is for that time.)

Chapter 1: So You Want To Help The Poor?

Do you want to help the poor? That is to be admired. It is evidence of a heart of flesh, not stone. It shows you think, not of yourself only, but also of others. It is the mark of being truly human, not an unfeeling sociopath or psychopath.

Do you really want to help the poor? You do well. All the great religions command us to help the poor. God blesses us when we do. The Bible says, "Blessed is he who remembers the poor. God will remember him in his time of trouble." (Psalm 41:1)

Do you still want to help the poor? Good. But do you understand what is involved? Do you know the best ways to do it? Are you willing to put aside what you already think and learn from those who have gone before you, particularly the ones with a documented track record of helping poor people succeed in moving "up and out" of their distress? That is what this book is for.

To start, here is an acrostic based on the word "humble."

H is for humble. Inner humility is essential. Thinking "there, but for the grace of God, go I" should be constant. Except for accidents, such as being born to our particular parents, in our particular place and time and country, it could have been us. None of us can be sure it will not be us, some day! Humility is the place to begin, when trying to help the poor.

U is for understanding. That means empathy and sympathy, but just for starters. Still more, it means understanding why they are poor, and what it will take to help them up and out of where they are. It means studying what has already been learned by old hands. It means practice, just like in tennis or swimming, developing the reflexes, not just heart and brain.

Understanding will never happen without considerable hands-on experience first. Making theories, reading or watching alone will never help one poor person. They will never teach you the basics. Until you get your hands dirty, whole areas of understanding will be beyond you.

M is for money. Sadly so. But there is no helping the poor without it. Prepare to give. And prepare for fund-raising. Learn it. Smile. Get good at it. And above all, be totally honest and scrupulous in how you raise it and use it. Make sure any organization you give money to can prove they are following this standard.

Also make sure rigorous measures are taken to ensure there is no theft, dishonesty or corruption going on in your own organization. Annual audits are a must. So is a Certified Public Accountant. And an honest, capable person tasked with keeping an eagle eye on what is going on with the money, all the time, with quick corrections of problems, and quick firings of anyone, no matter how high up, for serious misuse of money meant to help the poor.

B is for brave. And also boldness. You will need to do some frightening things. Not only go into places that are bad for safety or health sometimes, but also to do things that feel forbidden. Things such as holding people accountable. Setting rules for receiving assistance. Enforcing them. Insisting and insisting. Using penalties sometimes.

Why would these things take courage? Because you will be hammered for doing them. Those you will be trying to help often will fight back against being held accountable. They often know how to make you feel like a jerk, too. People and groups who think such accountability is wrong and heartless will go after you, in ways you would not believe yet. Without courage to do what really helps, regardless, not just what looks good, you cannot do much more for the poor than hand-holding. Bravery is required.

L is for love. You cannot do much for the poor without it. But it takes many forms. Pity is one. Sympathy and empathy too. Trying to help the poor by forcing others to pay for it is one form of love, though a weaker form, since for it calls for sacrifice by others, not ourselves. Self-sacrificing love is a much stronger form. The form that will be needed most, however, is "tough love." That does not mean being mean or heartless, but it will mean some kind of struggle when that is what it takes. But Chapter Three is all about that.

E is for effective. If we are not effective in helping the poor, why bother? Actually, there are some reasons for many people to "just go through the motions" without caring about whether they actually helped much or not.

One common ploy is making a show. Some people want to be thought of as good persons, but without actually doing much good.

Another reason is the thrill of it all. It is true. Helping poor people makes us feel good. So a lot of people will do it in an addicted, but almost useless, way, trying to get the biggest feel-good while giving or doing almost nothing. A cheap thrill, you might say.

Another reason is people being more worried about the feelings of the poor than what happens to them and their children. What they want is to pat them, smile, make them feel better, but not much more than that. They end up treating them like pets, avoiding the hard part of helping because it might make someone feel bad. So they do mostly hand-holding, while leaving them in their poverty and distress. Hand-holding is an important part of helping the poor. But it is only a part.

The only way to be effective ini helping the poor is to concentrate on results, results, results. Learning how to get them. Tracking what is done, and correcting course to make it work better. Using only methods that have been field-tested. Not bringing new or old ideas into wide use without field-testing them on a smaller scale first. (Or using what others have field-tested and proven first.)

But that is what the rest of the book is about. Being effective means finding out what works best in getting poor people "up and out" and then putting it into practice.

Do you still want to help the poor? Good! You are very, very badly needed. But please, do it for them, not for yourself. And care enough to do it right

WHAT KATRINA REFUGEES NEED MOST? JOBS!

Many American refugees from Katrina are already arriving in other cities. I know of three shelters in Texas already, in Houston, San Antonio and the covered Burger Statium here in Austin. Arkansas has some too, and more are coming.

As an old hand at helping poor people move up out of bad situations, I want to make a suggestion to all those trying to help these storm victims. Whether they were poor or not before, most of them are now. What they need is to get back on their feet somehow, soon. Handouts just won't achieve that. They need jobs. The only way out of such a deep hole is to work your way out. That can only start with a job.

But aren't they too stressed, too depressed, too much in shock and grief? Actually, a job would help them with all that. The great psychologist Rollo May said that the only cure for grief is time and work. Work is healing! Being unemployed often leads to feeling worthless. A job brings confidence, a sense of being worth something. It faces us toward the future and brings hope. And the money to apply toward our hopes.

But do we have enough jobs for them in America? Before I stop laughing at the idea, let me put on my old economist's hat for a minute. Yes - there are plenty of jobs in America! Presently we are at 5% unemployment, or more-than-full employment. Full employment is defined as about 5.6% unemployment. (That level is where those who want to work are working, except for those temporarily moving from one job to another. For instance, worker B is busy applying for the job worker C just left, while worker A is preparing to apply for the job worker B just left. This movement between jobs is called "frictional unemployment." It is a normal part of the work world, involving about 5.6% of the workforce at any one time. It is not the same as true unemployment. That is why 5.6% unemployment is considered "full employment.")

The U.S. economy, after all, is the one that has somehow absorbed around 11 million illegal immigrants into the job market, yet still has more-than-full employment! It is the economy that continually outsources more and more jobs overseas, while still continuing to increase the total jobs in the U.S. It is the economy that bounced back from a 2000 recession made sharply deeper after 9/11, in just 2 to 3 years. It happens to be the economy that fuels all the other economies in the world. And we don't have enough jobs to employ all these refugees?

Excuse me, but that is just silly. If anyone tries to make such a claim, the only rational response would be mirth and amazement. After all, there were only some 500,000 people in all of New Orleans. That many would not make a serious dimple in our workforce.

As an example, when the unemployment rate was much higher, at 7-8% in California during 1988-92, we made the homeless families in our shelter get jobs. Impossible? Heartless? Well, not one of them (out of a few thousand) failed to get a job. Please!

A big risk is that the Katrina homeless may never want to leave their new shelters. After the great earthquake of 1989 in the California Bay Area, some of our San Jose Family Shelter staff went to Watsonville to see what was happening in the tent city there. We had trouble believing what we learned. After a year in the tent city, everything was ready for them to leave. And they did not want to leave! Some were planning to actually refuse to go.

Why? They had become dependent. They had gotten used to having food, water, shelter, everything they needed, brought directly to them. They did not have to lift a finger for any of it. They also had formed a new, though artificial, community. They did not want to leave it.

Who are the thousands needing help because of Katrina? They are most likely to be the very poorest of New Orleans and the other stricken communities. The more prosperous, the ones with cars, are most of the ones who got out on time.

New Orleans was already thought of as socially "the last helpless city in American." (See Nicole Galinas, former resident of New Orleans, at City Journal, http://www.city-journal.org/.) It had a crime rate 10 times higher than the rest of America. She writes of an economy completely dependent on tourism, with no real competent government or civil infrastructure. The best and most affluent corporations and people had fled for years, leaving behind a population largely dependent on the government. The 10% or so who stayed in New Orleans to wait out the hurricane were largely the ones without cars, mostly from this dependent population. (HT to James Tarranto, Best of the Web Today, Wall Street Journal, 9-1-05.)

These Katrina refugees need jobs. They need, not further dependency, but independence. Those who help them can help the able-bodied among them best by prodding them into jobs, and by requiring them to work in order to continue to receive help. Anything short of that will also fall short of true compassion for these stricken people.

There is a guidebook for helping the poor in this way. I wrote it out of my long experience, but never published it. Right now, I pledge to get it up online, where anyone can read it for free, just as fast as I can. Anyone planning to work with Katrina refugees is going to need it, or something like it! Until then, God bless all of you as you try to help your neighbors - the refugees from Katrina.