for a while now, I've been interviewing Myanmar Christians about their experiences with western missions. Everyone I have spoken with has raised this issue:

Christians coming from outside Myanmar to get involved with ministries will give resources to one close contact...

...and apart from that contact, they have with little connection with the community.

"They trust them 110% and won't listen to anyone but that main contact," one person put it.

Generosity as an outsider is complex. At some point, as an outsider, you have let go and trust someone on the ground to use resources well. There are situations (such as sending relief to IDP camps), where as an outsider you cannot enter the community to follow up on $ gifts.

This is not the issue that these Myanmar Christians are addressing.

What they are talking about is the tendency of outsiders (USA, S. Korea, Australia, Singapore, etc) coming in to support a powerful local Christian, and trusting them without doing any further investigation.

These sorts of connections are usually forged from a distance, by Christians from the outside who do not live in or near the Myanmar communities they are trying to finance.

And b/c there is $$, but not time and interest devoted to relationship, it's a situation ripe for abuse.

One interviewee, who works with a community that knows desperate financial, put it like this:

"They send money, and their money is only doing more harm because it ends up in the hands of terrible people. Their money is like poison."

On the other end of this issue, some of the same people have also raised heartbreaking stories of how some wealthy Christians who come from outside Myanmar are stingy and act like everyone is trying to cheat them. This is also incredibly damaging.

This is not a plea to stop giving money to projects in other places. Generosity is good and shouldn't stop just because some people are careless.

Generosity will always be imperfect; that should not stop us from being generous.

I've talked to Myanmar people who have been really hurt by the When Helping Hurts approach to navigating these issues (especially the way it has fostered a distrust of poor and/or local people).

There is no formula for fixing this. None of the people I have interviewed were saying, "don't give to financial needs because of this issue."

But all of them did say this:

follow your money and learn what it is doing.

Be curious and try to be sure that the person you are funding is not an abuser.

//end.//