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I have long been wondering about the logics of assistance processes. I thought about it carefully and started analysing it from the simplest cases: friends and relatives. In these instances, when we offer help it is because we are very well acquainted with the problems to be solved, we know our friends deeply and we know what challenge is to be faced and which tools are needed. Surely there is a natural disposition to be helped from those who need help, and there is also a natural disposition to listen from those who want to help. That is the crucial point: to know how to listen properly. How often when we need help, do we choose to ask for it to that person who will listen to us and understand the situation?

In the world of social work, maybe those who need help most are the NGOs and minor projects where actual field work, i.e. work with the community, takes place. More often than not, these projects have a small start, driven by good will and great intentions and sometimes they lack academic support and adequate planning just because their mentors aren’t academicians or enterpreneurs, and were never instructed for those purposes. This does not mean that their projects are not good. It only means they can be improved. Among the institutions that want to assist these executive NGOs are larger NGOs and companies with CSR programs. However, we often find that these entities don’t wish to listen first and only then suggest an accorded line of action. On the contrary, we see that they decide beforehand what is needed and how to put it into practice. “I want to help you, don’t tell me anything. This is what you need” seems to be the message.

Not long ago, I met a former schoolmate who is now a successful enterpreneur at a frozen food facility. I told him I had founded an NGO to help destitute children and he stopped me at once: “I want to help” he said without putting any further questions on the subject. Then he added: “We throw away daily 120 kilos of pizza dough that remain unused. We can give them to you Project”. It was perhaps a useful idea for a NGO that had bakeries, facilities to receive that product daily and equipment to bake the dough. That was not our case. After explaining this, I suggested developing a joint Project with his company: “We might organize bakery workshops, train people who are interested or commercialize the product in a community fair or market. But he was not interested, what he really wanted was to get rid daily of 120 kilos of dough and it was almost our duty to accept this act of generosity.

We also find that many large NGO and companies impose their course of action in the social area without ever having listened to those working with the community, those really well acquainted with the problem. If we talk of community development, we obviously cannot bring forth solutions or neither bookish “or academic” logics without first having discussed with the community. They are the ones who have the problems, they must play a decisive part when the time to face and solve them comes. But quite often, unfortunately, the actions directed to help the community end up with no possitive results, either because of ignorance or due to a feeling of pity -or even arrogance. “My company wants to help you: once a month, we can have our employees go and help as volunteers in a schooling program”. This offer meant a problem rather than help, since we already had that kind of program and it became quite difficult to coordinate the work of 50 volunteers of another company. But the decision of how to help had already been made, although no one had asked us what we where doing and what kind of help we needed. Very frequently, large NGOs also fall into the same mistake of not listening. So we see that “innovative”, “creative”, and other similar criteria are repeatedly considered a priority and “magic solutions” when the time to set forth action programs come. This does not mean they are not valid, it means that each particular situation has to be analysed to agree whether these criteria are really a priority.

Jagdish Bhagwati –University of Columbia Economy and Law Professor- has often spoken about the absorption power of the African Continent. Bhagwati  has critized Bono, U2 band leader, because of his ideas to solve the problem of poverty. Among the reasons he gives, he mentions that the amount of money Africa has received lately hasn’t altered the situation, mainly because it didn’t reach the communities and the projects were not developed locally. Being Bhagwati  against social charity plans –those similar to our Household Plans in Argentina-, the economist suggests that the use of the funds should be agreed upon by local organizations: “Let not the decisions be made by ‘wise men’ such as my good friend George Soros! On the contrary, let its allocation be chosen by the charity institutions of the country the money comes from. Many national charity institutions are excellent and have a real notion of the problem of absorption capacity”.

In the competition Changemakers organized by NIKE and Ashoka, an International NGO that intends to promote and strengthen social enterpreneurs, one of the leaders of the Uganda project wrote: “Anything meant for us without us is against us”. The author of this statement, Caleb Wakhungu, entitled his Project with this declaration: “Young people are not mere receptors of services but actual agents of change”.

Collective actions are needed to potentiate agents of change, where the different parts learn how to listen to each other, understand each other and device joint solutions. I think that the boom of CSR constitutes an excellent opportunity for companies and large NGOs to work together with people and organizations doing field work with equalitarian treatment and a humble attitude. And magic and “canned” solutions do not work. Only collective work will operate as an agent of social change. Maybe we should start asking first and then listening, thus planning a joint effort.