Rather than simply considering what ‘we’ can do to ‘help the suffering people’ more effort needs to be put on letting people get on with it themselves and letting them identify what additional support they feel they need (something that can only happen at a very local level in my opinion before corruption or bigger interests come into play).

I think the point about Youth Act is very relevant - over the years we did courses with Youth Act groups there were clear differences between those groups that wanted to campaign on an issue they were genuinely interested in and those who chose a topic just because they had to as part of the process. This links nicely back to my first point to question how many well intended services are given over to communities that actually don’t want them?

Part of the problem with the notion of “we helping” is the implication “they helpless”, yet in those communities are highly intelligent, highly motivated people capable of helping themselves. So I wonder sometimes whether the debate should be what we can do? or whats stopping them from doing it?