“When Helping Hurts” … Hurts
Plenty of people have read the book When Helping Hurts. Has the book helped or hurt the global poor? Have you read the book “When Helping...
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Resources
Expand your knowledge toolkit by reading about the most pressing mission topics
Mark Crocker
2 min read
How to help the working poor – Selling handicrafts
A missionary friend notified me on Facebook that she was selling the handiwork of a local friend of hers. She wanted to figure out how...
Mark Crocker
3 min read
Bob Geldof is Pimping the Poor.
Bob raised an amazing amount of money for a problem that the world was trying hard to ignore. I have to heartily applaud him. The problem is
Mark Crocker
3 min read
Africa is a Country II: people got angry, you’ll never guess why!
Last week I started up a war. I wrote a controversial post about the country of Africa and said that due to bad press because of the...
Mark Crocker
3 min read
Why “Just Send Money” Might Be A Terrible Idea
Shouldn’t we just send money to fix the world? “Why do we waste all that time and effort sending volunteers when we could just send money...
Mark Crocker
4 min read
The second worst way to think about the poor.
When I think about the poor I am reminded of the time I was in the middle of a boring class and unfortunately I was the teacher. It’s a...
Mark Crocker
2 min read
STM Volunteer: You are the punchline
You want to change the world. To your friends and family you are incredibly driven, capable, and inspiring. To the machinery of...
Mark Crocker
6 min read
Do not be the change you want to see
Have you ever tried to corral a group of friends and come up with a plan. What do we want for lunch? What movie do you want to see?...
Mark Crocker
3 min read
If you only had $2 to help the poor this might be the best way to use it.
I was training a group in Toronto. All of them were on their way overseas to go work in countries where poverty is a daily reality in...
Mark Crocker
3 min read
Short Term Mission Failure: a poorly kept secret?
No one likes to talk about short term mission failure. It is a lot easier to celebrate our successes. For example, wells have been...
Mark Crocker
4 min read
Should Anyone Care For the Poor?
We were on our way to care for the poor. We were up a mountain. Our truck had made the nearly vertical track upwards in low gear We blew...
Mark Crocker
4 min read
Want to help the poor? Don’t make this rookie mistake
A few years ago I was at a church that wanted to help the poor, so we started looking for some poor people to help. We formed a...
Mark Crocker
2 min read
89 reasons why you think about poverty the way you do
Pictures stick with us, sometimes for decades. For me it was the first time I went to Ethiopia, I knew the famine was long over, but...
Mark Crocker
2 min read
So You Want to be an Aid Worker?
You might have an appetite to become an aid worker, but do you have the stomach for it? This was the question an aid-worker friend posed...
Mark Crocker
2 min read
A short term mission trip packing list – without screwing up the poor
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]If you want to be part of the solution, and not the problem, you want to start by unpacking the...
Mark Crocker
1 min read
Causes of Poverty: The answer will surprise you.
Late one night in a hotel room in Toronto in my way to Haiti, I realized I was going to miss a class I was supposed to teach the next...
Mark Crocker
2 min read
How to tell the story of poverty without exploiting poor people … again
I have seen many teams proudly wearing all kinds of crazy on a t-shirt. Bright colours, comic sans font and a heavy scripture verse seem...
Mark Crocker
2 min read
The #1 Change That Haiti Needs for Poverty Alleviation
I recently had lunch with a friend and we talked, as I often do, about poverty alleviation in tough areas of the world. He asked about...
Mark Crocker
3 min read
Why I Refuse to ‘Just Help Out’
If I try to explain “community sensitization” and “needs & asset assessment“, I watch eyes glaze over. As interesting as being an...
Mark Crocker
4 min read
The secret meaning behind that wiggle word “Partnership”
What do you call it when I give you money, and you give me a report and a receipt? Most people would say this is simple. This is the...
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