When Helping Hurts: How to Alleviate Poverty Without Hurting the Poor . . . and Yourself

by Steve Corbett

A few months later, John took a two-week trip to Uganda to help the churches there to put together a business plan for a MF program. John left them with a check for twenty thousand dollars to start making loans. Six months later, all of the money had been lent out. Twelve months later, almost none of the money had been paid back, and the churches in Uganda were now asking Grace for more money to replenish their MF program. The black hole was bigger than ever before. Although there may be some exceptions in particular contexts, Grace Fellowship’s experience is very common. Many churches, missionaries, and ministries from North America have been trying to use MF as part of their global outreach. Unfortunately, they usually find that emulating the Grameen Bank is far more difficult than they imagined. Loans are often not repaid, putting a drain on ministry budgets and causing some programs to collapse entirely. Everybody gets hurt in the process: the North American churches, ministries, and missionaries; the partner churches and ministries in the Majority World; and—most important—the poor themselves.