Giving Compass' Take:

• Based on her own experience with her white savior complex, Sarita Hartz offers insights into working respectfully and impactfully in foreign contexts by following the lead of the locals.

• What are the consequences of failing to work respectfully? How can organizations build checks into their programs to ensure that their work will have a lasting impact?

• Kris Putnam-Walkerly provides ways to earn more respect in philanthropy. 

  • Be a Learner: When we go into a new culture we should spend up to two years learning, having conversations, doing life with people, doing research, understanding complex political dynamics and cultural elements before we launch projects.
  • Check Your Compassion: Compassion is good. We need that compassion to move us to seek justice in the world. We all have good intentions when we serve overseas, but good intentions are not enough. People overseas do not need your pity based on your white privilege. Compassion without wisdom can rob people of being empowered, it can place them in a position of always looking to you when they could be looking to themselves.
  • Empower nationals: Trust takes time. Go slow. Build relationships of mutual respect where the power dynamics do not rest on you “saving” someone, but rather where you are learning and sharing your own problems as much as you are “teaching.” Respect the agency of each individual, that they have the power and knowledge to solve their own problems and they have the capacity, knowledge and ability to change their own lives. Ask what they have and use that instead of thinking of what you have.

Read the full article about working respectfully in foreign contexts by Sarita Hartz at Medium.