So I guess my answer to your ending questions would be this: Take the time to understand the people you are trying to help. Live with them and try to understand why they do the things they do–or at the very least hire someone to do that for you. Then you can use what you have to truly bless the lives of those you are trying to help.

I think your point is well made. Often we rush into “help”, but do not really take the time to really get to know the people.
While I was interviewing some local people in Tanzania - asking them their perceptions of people from Europe and US who were come to help them, they said that they knew the white people come and go - and so they always know they will be leaving sooner or later (usually within a period of a couple months) so they agree with them while they are there (regarding whatever their particular project is), but secretly inside they know it is not really one of their own priorities, so they will not have to worry about it much and only have to agree with the aid workers for a short time until they are gone.

By just going in and giving “aid”, I think the situation too often sets up a situation of dependency (which I think deprives people of a lot of self-respect).

While I was on a “boda boda” (the motorcylces that drive you around in Uganda) a grown man drove up next to me and saw the equivalent of 50 US cents in my hand. He asked me for it, and I said no. I asked him if he could give me some money, and he said no.
Then he said, “You look money. Your color looks money”

So very often people think - “you are white, you should give me money.”

Soon I will blog about a cool experience at the TEDC 2008 conference that was very different from this.

He shares data on the trillions spent on foreign aid and the little good it has done, he argues for more feedback for and accountability of aid organizations, less grand plans and more emphasis on local homegrown solutions which are accountable to the people they are supposed to serve, and he makes a distinction between what he calls planners and searchers.

“Planners determine what to supply; Searchers find out what is in demand. Planners apply global blueprints, Searchers adapt to local conditions. …A Planner thinks he already knows the answer; he thinks of poverty as a technical engineering problem that his answers will solve. A Searcher admits he doesn’t know the answers in advance; he believes that poverty is a complicated tangle of political, social, historical, institutional, and technological factors. A Searcher hopes to find answers to individual problems only by trial and error experimentation. A Planner believes outsiders know enough to impose solutions. A Searcher believes only insiders have enough knowledge to find solutions, and that most solutions must be homegrown.” (p. 6)

“The Enlightenment saw the Rest as a blank slate - without any meaningful history or institutions of its own-upon which the West could inscribe its superior ideals.” (p. 23)

“The most infuriating thing about the Planners is how patronizing they are (usually unconciously).” (p. 26)

“Although the West could help alleviate more of the poor’s suferings if it relied more on Searchers in aid agencies and those on the gorund…, the West cannot transform the Rest. It is a fantasy to think that the West can change complex societies with very different histories and cultures into some image of itself. The main hope for the poor is for them to be their own Searchers, borrowing ideas and technology from the West when it suits them to do so.” (p. 26)

“Acknowledging that development happens mainly through homegrown efforts would liberate the agencies of the West from utopian goals, freeing up development workers to concentrate on more modest, doable steps to make poor people’s lives better.” (p. 29)

“Searchers could think of mechanisms to let the poor themselves show what they want most and what they don’t. We will see that there is much scope for improvement just by having the West follow the rule ‘First do no harm’.” (p. 30)

“Searchers can gradually figure out hot the poor can give more feedback to more accountable agents on what they know and what they most want and need. The big plans and utopian dreams just get in the way, wasting scarce energies.” (p. 30)