Sharon Eubank worked for Latter-day Saints Charities from 1998 until this year. During that time she served on the Relief Society General Board, and has served as the director of Latter-day Saints Charities since 2011. She has seen how humanitarian aid efforts both work and don't work in a variety of settings and cultures. This short non-fiction book acts like an introduction to humanitarian aid principles and includes exercises and thought questions at the end of each chapter. Some of her main points are: it it is better to meet needs locally than from outside of communities, real solutions must be locally sustainable, it is wrong to think that you know how to solve someone else's problems, and sometimes well intentioned efforts have bad outcomes.
I have often wondered when I have been part of a "service project" whether we the project really served the intended recipients, or merely made the "servers" feel good about themselves. A lot of what Ms Eubank said in this book confirmed that fear. Although she gave lots of good suggestions about how to make humanitarian aid better, I did not really leave the book feeling motivated or encouraged about improving my own contribution to the world. Her approach seems overwhelming to me because of my insecurities and reserve. Showing people great love is hard because I never know if my efforts come across as caring or annoying. I do feel grateful that the Latter-day Saints Charities is doing so much good work in the world. (240 p. 2025)
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