As Professional Social Workers, we recognize that the Charity Approach is not sufficient to deal with the root cause of poverty as it makes the beneficiary dependent on the donor, and does nothing to help the person stand on one’s own feet, or change the unjust system that creates and perpetuates poverty. It is the proverbial problem of ‘giving a fish’ rather than ‘feeding them for life by teaching them to fish’.
Our Development Approach hardly doles out any money to the poor (except in emergencies), but fruitfully uses the donor’s contributions to create opportunities i.e., bringing the poor together to form Self-Help Groups, equipping them for income generation activities, supporting them to market their products and so on where the approach (or perspective) maintained is that of ‘Community-Led Development’.
