When Form 2220 Developments 2023-2024

Thank you. The question "Can I help you?" is a question that millions of people ask each other every day. But what does it actually mean to help someone? I believe that helping is a powerful human impulse, but there is also a shadow side to helping. Some forms of helping can actually do more harm than good. Rosabeth Moss Kanter, a Harvard academic, beautifully puts it when she says that when we force change upon people, they experience it as violence. But when people change for themselves, they experience it as liberation. Today, I want to present a simple idea. If we want to help people and their communities without causing harm, the best place to start is with what is strong within them. Instead of focusing on what's wrong, we should focus on their strengths and the strengths of their communities. There is an abundance of evidence that supports this way of helping, including a 75-year study on happiness, a longitudinal study from Harvard, and the work of the Kettering Foundation and the New Economics Foundation here in the UK. Despite this evidence, most governmental and non-governmental programs continue to focus on what is wrong with people and communities. This focus has caused immense harm, especially to poor people and communities. It has led to four unintended consequences. Firstly, it defines helpers by their deficiencies rather than their gifts. Secondly, the money intended to help those in need often goes to those providing the services instead. Thirdly, active citizenship retreats as technocracy and expertise take over. Lastly, communities start to believe that only outside experts can rescue them. These unintended consequences are not what caring professionals want, and they are not what communities need. Fortunately, there is another way of thinking about helping. We can focus on what's strong instead of...