Helping people help themselves: towards a theory of autonomy-compatible help

This paper asks - if development is seen basically as autonomous self-development - can an an outside party ("helper") assist those who are undertaking autonomous activities (the "doers") without overriding or undercutting their autonomy?The paper starts from a simple model of non-distortionary aid exploring several themes of a broader helping theory and shows how these themes arise in different fields such as pedagogy, social philosophy, management theory, psychotherapy, spiritual counseling, community organizing, community education, and economic development.From the different perspectives the paper identifies areas of commonality which are summarized as follows using the common framework of "helpers" trying to provide autonomy-compatible assistance to a certain set of "doers": help must start from the present situation of the doers—not from a "blank slate"helpers must see the situation through the eyes of the doers—not just through their own eyeshelp cannot be imposed upon the doers—as that directly violates their autonomynor can doers receive help as a benevolent gift—as that creates dependencydoers must be "in the driver's seat"—which is the basic idea of autonomous self-directionOne major application of helping theory is to the problems of knowledge-based development assistance.The .standard approach is a teacher-centered pedagogy whilst the alternative approach of helping theory is the learner-centered approach of the active learning pedagogy. Changing to the approach of helping theory entails changing the helping-agency itself from a "church" model to an organization that fosters learning internally as well as externally.[adapted from author]A<A HREF="http://wbln0018.worldbank.org/oed/oeddoclib.nsf/ae4e28c9568f3c6285256808006a0027/78865ec2667a28da852569770070e357/$FILE/HelpngPl.pdf">shorter and earlier version</A> of this paper is available as a working paper on the OED website.