Philosophy of Mission

Everyone loves the sense of wellbeing that comes from helping others. While it is easy to acquire that feeling, it is much harder to ensure that the changes that come from helping across the world or nearer to home accomplish lasting, sustainable results. History reveals that well-intentioned efforts to help other human beings has sometimes resulted in increased corruption, dehumanization, or wasted resources. In most cases, these are the original causes of need in the first place. Justice, Compassion, and Hope seeks to restore efficacy and integrity to mission efforts by learning from past mistakes and embarking on a journey of partnership and empowerment with those in need.

Different cultures have distinct ways of thinking about money and relationships. These differences between those helping and those receiving help can create space for some pretty big errors. In relationship-centered cultures like most of South America, the needy feel that their most urgent need is a relationship, not money. They view their hardship as resulting from being marginalized first socially, and then economically. In order to help in a way that empowers them to stand on their own without a loss of dignity, help must come first in the form of a relationship, second in the form of money if that is needed, and lastly in the form of a relationship. Anything less sends a hurtful message, like “You are not worth my time.”

Another harmful effect of short-sighted aid is to the local economy. Imagine you are a cobbler in a small village. You borrow a few dollars and invest in a sewing machine to keep up with demand and meet the needs of your village, where shoes are made of local, natural materials and eventually wear out, allowing you to support your family. Now, a foreign company sends a donation of a truckload of shoes to “help” the village, and no one needs your shoemaking or repair services for a while. You sell your sewing machine to pay back the loan and try to make a living farming. Eventually the donated shoes wear out and accumulate in piles as non-biodegradable trash. The end result is a village that has no shoes, and also has no cobbler. Its only alternative is to ask for more shoes, deepening the cycle of dependence. Deep thought needs to be given to the long-term economic impacts of aid, both positive and negative.

Injecting money into a community can also attract corruption and create jealousies between those that receive it and those that don’t. In other words there are a whole lot of ways that financial aid can go wrong.

Our desire is to help others in a way that actually helps them better themselves. Sometimes this means helping financially, and sometimes this means saying no. We need to constantly check ourselves that we are helping in effective ways rather than just sending money to make ourselves feel better, or to assuage some misplaced sense of guilt.

In our experience, this always means relationships first. And relationships with the local community that are long-term and present enough to sense when things are going wrong and going right. We don’t expect to get it perfect every time, but we do expect to learn from our mistakes by listening to our local experts and pivoting quickly when we realize things are going sideways. If we can’t commit to long-term relationships int eh local community, we should say no. Or partner with others that are already in the community and let their expertise yield the fruit. Real change happens through relationships.

Local expertise in the culture and economy are critical to successful mission work. In Brazil, that meant we started the only local non-profit working where the need existed, because we were the experts in the culture and had the relationships already. In other cases it means we partner with proven, transparent organizations and people so they can guide support to where it needs to go, and in the form it needs to be received.

Sustainability is huge. Reducing garbage accumulation is important everywhere. Reducing the carbon footprint and minimizing environmental impact are also huge; that is why we designed a safer septic system to be used in northeastern Brazil, that can be made with the same materials and costs as the existing tanks that were leaking into the groundwater. But to us sustainability goes much deeper: creating teachable, affordable solutions to empower local communities. Building resources that will transfer to local ownership and operation and become self-supported, no longer relying on foreign funds or leadership. Training and empowering those leaders to do greater things that we did.

At the deepest core of our heart, our compassion goes out to those who are victims of human trafficking. This is a complex issue with as many different causes as there are stories of those whose lives are destroyed by it. Poverty, lack of education, lack of work opportunities, lack of social systems, and many other factors contribute to people and families who are at risk of human trafficking. We hate that some people have to choose between starving or selling themselves. We hate to see daughters pushed into the sex trade by their stepfathers. We want to help in these cases most of all, and nearly everything we do is aimed at this work. However, for the safety of those who need our help, we are not always able to talk openly about each case. When we talk about helping those in need, this is what we mean.

We invite you to partner with us as we make a difference in this world.