Independence Update 8/6/26
Helping people become independent.
You've probably heard it many times before, "If you start helping people, you'll just make them dependent on you. Instead of learning to stand on their own two feet, they'll get used to you giving them money and they will stop trying to support themselves. And if for some reason you stop giving them money, they'll be worse off than ever."
Just recently we were going through our records of the people we have helped through the years. The one thing that stands out is how often someone who comes to us in an emergency- sudden illness, pregnancy, homelessness or simple hunger- simply asks for help for a one-time problem and then disappears. The vast majority of people we have helped in Ghana do not come back begging for money again and again. When they have a crisis that is about to overwhelm them, they come to John asking for help but then they go on their way and we never hear from them again. They simply do not become dependent on our aid. They do not ask again.
One exception to this is Anabel, who was brought to us when she was abandoned by her mother. We have continued to support her because she simply has no one else to help her. This is a responsibility we have taken on a long-term basis because the only other alternative is to turn her out on the street and this, we are not willing to do. Generally speaking, we have also continued to support nursing mothers after they have come to us asking for help to deliver their babies safely in a hospital. Helping babies to be born healthy and happy and alive is a bit part of our work and we are proud of the many children we have helped to bring safely into the world. But the first few months of a baby's life are very important, and very dangerous. Especially for children who are born into the kind og grinding poverty that swallows their mothers in Africa. So to the degree that we can we continue to provide care for treatment of childhood illnesses and also simple food and shelter for mother and child for some time after birth.
And of course there are some who simply will never be able to survive on their own. These are usually handicapped people who cannot work and will never be able to work. To argue that they become dependent on our aid is to argue that they have an alternative. They cannot do day labor, they cannot go out on the fishing boats, they simply are not able to do the kinds of things poor people do in Ghana to survive. They are often reduced to begging and this they do, but when that is not enough they ask for help, usually for shelter, and this we provide for them as we can. We are not willing to throw them away. Every life is precious.
But in the vast majority of cases the people we help make it though their emergencies on to get their lives in order and do not come back. We are not creating permanent beggars. We are helping people survive emergencies so that they can rebuild their lives and go on to make something of themselves.
