The wellbeing of the people we are trying to help must be the focus of our efforts to help them.
How do we live our values?
This question carries special challenges for those who live their lives trying to help others. How do we describe ourselves? “Meddlers” is what one friend who has been meddling for several decades call us. Another friend calls us the “well-meaning interveners”. Still another uses the term “busybodies”.
All these terms are slightly self-deprecating, slightly unsure and anxious. The words signal a real concern about the audacity of intervening in other people’s lives, other people’s problems. We are right to be uncomfortable with this role and how it might be perceived, especially by those with whom we are working. What are our motives? Why do we do this? How can we be so sure that what we do is right?
Most of us would say that our values called us to this work. We could not stand by and watch—or ignore—human suffering without offering a helping hand. Yet our actions do not always the have the effect we intended, sometimes with terrible consequences. The recipients of our assistance question our motives and our presence. Our values seem unattainable.
How do we live our values so that they shine through? How do we avoid being overwhelmed by complex situations and perceptions that question our interventions, making them appear manipulative and mean? How do we get helping right?
We form principles based upon our values to guide us toward right action. We look to them to point us in the right direction, and they do. But, at the end of the day—and every day—what we do, what we practice is where we make a difference.
This Guide is about practice. This Guide is about how to “do no harm”.
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Related Pages
The Principle
The Practice
The Project
Four Do No Harm Categories
