JONATHAN JANSEN | What kind of giver are you?

There are literally thousands of individuals and non-profit organisations (NPOs) doing vital work in education and development among disadvantaged communities.

They are the moral underground that fill the gaping holes in public services that government cannot or will not do. Salt-of-the-earth people, no doubt — but they are not all the same. Some do more harm than good for one simple reason: they do not know the difference between upliftment and empowerment.

The upliftment NPOs see themselves as strong and the others weak. They hand down things, sometimes second-hand. They drop off the soup in the township during winter then rush home to their warm living rooms in the suburbs, thereby remaining detached from the situations of others.

Sometimes the do-gooders use words that extricate themselves from history; in white Afrikaans communities where I worked, the recipients of handouts were called agtergeblewe (left behind) as if there was no deliberate historical and political forces that kept the left-behinds in states of oppression. It soothes the social conscience, it reinforces one’s own state of superiority, and it allows for a never-ending role in the upliftment of the wretched.

Churches are very good at this kind of upliftment work. They pray for you inside the safe and sometimes opulent surroundings of a cathedral or a kerk and send money to missionaries doing work far away. White churches seldom work with white poverty for those people are an embarrassment, even if their numbers are much smaller. The target is black people, who are kept in their place and at a distance from ornate places of worship while receiving blankets and food parcels at pre-determined drop-off points. What this means is that the left-behinds are given fish but never taught to fish, as the saying goes.

The empowerment NPOs, on the other hand, become involved in the communities where they work. They bring the people served into their homes for a meal around a shared table. Breaking bread, I called this elsewhere. Empowerment NPOs try to get to know the people they bless as part of the duty of service. Genuine and lasting friendships sometimes result.

To Jane, Sonja and Eric: thank you for leveraging your privilege in selfless ways to bring enduring change to the lives of countless South Africans.

Then something truly astounding: empowerment people literally work themselves out of a job so that the left-behinds rise to become the managers and leaders in their place.

Jane and the late Anthony Evans did this with Ntataise in the rural Free State. They trained women whose husbands were farm workers to become managers of the organisation providing early childhood education to now thousands of children around South Africa. It was hard, but the day Jane left the leadership, she had black women ready to manage a complex organisation. Some of those women would travel overseas to represent Ntataise among world leaders. That is called empowerment.

Sonja Cilliers does that with MathMoms in Elsies River, Cape Town. The original goal was to provide unemployed mothers with maths knowledge and skills so they could help their children with the subject after school. Now some of those mothers are mathematics teachers in our schools. Last Sunday the pews of the Three Anchor Bay Dutch Reformed Church in Sea Point were filled with some of the MathMoms. They read to the congregation from the scriptures and we enjoyed eating and drinking together afterwards.

Sonja’s husband, the dominee, got my attention with a stunning quotation from somewhere: the world must see the poor not from a distance but see the world through the eyes of the poor.

Upliftment (opheffing in Afrikaans) ensures safety; empowerment involves risk. Upliftment stands at a comfortable distance; empowerment implies intimate connection. Upliftment gives out of a storeroom of abundance; empowerment is sacrificial: giving of yourself. Upliftment works with the short-term; empowerment is built on a long-term vision for those served. Upliftment is mechanical delivery; empowerment is reflective and self-aware: there but for the grace of God, go I.

One of my heroes is a man called Eric Atmore who over decades has developed generations of young women from mainly disadvantaged contexts such as Langa and Athlone to become managers and leaders in early childhood development. He is not threatened by their rise in stature or position in the field; in fact, that is his mission. I have witnessed the growing confidence and competence of the young women in public fora and how an egoless Eric takes a backseat to allow them to shine. That is empowerment.

To Jane, Sonja and Eric: thank you for leveraging your privilege in selfless ways to bring enduring change to the lives of countless South Africans.