Handouts & Innovation in Kenya

Our experience working with the poor in Kenya has taught us that handouts are an enemy of innovation. When handouts are offered without structure and exclusively as acts of kindness, they tend to deny the poor the opportunity to develop survival strategies, making them dependents. If unchecked, this type of dependency could continue indefinitely.

The difference between an intervention and a handout is not easy to grasp. Interventions are handouts that lack strategies for long-term sustainability. These types of handouts are also referred to as acts of kindness.

Before acts of kindness are offered, the benefactors ought to ask the following questions:

1. How could we leverage resources to help the poor to rethink their consumption, utility and their markets.
2. How could we help create competencies and products from within the poor communities that have not yet been imagined?
3. How could we help create sustainability in the long term with our acts of kindness?

People that have been blessed with wealth find it fulfilling to invest in poor communities, enabling them a fresh start at life. Those investments disappear very quickly if not structure well to be sustainable.

Human behavior is complicated. Helping the poor and influencing others' life is no different. Unless you have a plan for self sustenance, you could either withhold your handout or partner with organizations that are able to connect the dots, multiply your handout and provide opportunities for the poor to help themselves in the long-term

Hope Kenya is focused on strategies that develop and deliver food, health and education to local communities in Kenya.