Saviorism is the practice of an individual trying to save or represent a community they are not a part of and do not share the same experiences with… Despite good intentions, practicing saviorism can further oppress the people one is trying to help.” — Rayna Gordon (Social justice educator)
During almost two decades working on humanitarian aid projects in conflict and disaster zones, I came to accept the quote and saw it happening in multiple instances as one of the biggest mistakes international aid organisations make is assuming they know more than the people they are trying to help.
That assumption is rarely made through arrogance. It usually comes from good but misguided intentions that aid workers are there as saviours rather than helpers. We arrive with funding, technical expertise and carefully designed programmes, living in protected communities believing we understand the problem and the solution. Yet time after time I found that local communities often understood both far better than we did.
Among first experiences that changed my thinking about this occurred in Kosovo.
I was given a programme to rebuild roofs on houses damaged during the conflict at the end of the nineties. After we had provided the materials, my budget simply wasn’t large enough to complete all the contract work that was needed. Contractors were onhigh demand and knew international organisations had funding available and would pay any price in the competition for their services and their quotations reflected that.
While listening to one of our local security guards tell it, he mentioned that he had recently rebuilt his own roof for considerably less than the quoted prices we were receiving. That conversation completely changed my thinking.
Instead of negotiating with contractors ourselves, I realized people had skills we were not using and suggested providing approved beneficiaries with a fixed grant and allowing them to negotiate directly. They understood the local market far better than we did. Many completed the work for less than our budget estimates and some even retained part of the grant for other family priorities.
Similarly, while working in Afghanistan, I saw programmes designed to teach women sewing and embroidery as a way of generating income. The assumption seemed logical until you spoke with the women themselves. Many had been sewing and teaching embroidery to their daughters since childhood. They did not lack the skills. They lacked opportunities and income. Giving them another sewing lesson was solving the wrong problem while simultaneously solving the real one.
I saw the same pattern elsewhere.
Village leaders would request irrigation canals because that reflected their priorities sincer they owned the land yet conversations with ordinary villagers who were the labour force often revealed that reliable access to clean drinking water mattered far more to their daily lives.
Another programme I was involved with supplied tractors to improve agricultural productivity to forty farmers in Afghanistan. The project was judged a success because farmers received modern equipment yet little thought had been given to the thousand or so agricultural labourers whose work disappeared as a result. Every intervention creates winners and losers, and unless we understand the wider community we risk helping one group while unintentionally harming another.
I stopped seeing local people as beneficiaries waiting for solutions. Instead, I began to see them as partners who already possessed the knowledge needed to solve many of their own problems. Our role was not to replace their capability but to provide the resources, tools and support that allowed that capability to flourish ans so I designed programs that took advantage of that.
Poverty should never be confused with lack of ability.
Communities affected by conflict or disaster may have lost homes, livelihoods and security, but they have not lost their experience, ingenuity or resilience.
The most successful aid programmes are often those that begin by listening, recognising existing strengths and building on them rather than assuming outside organisations always know best.
