Gift-Giving Guidelines

It is often difficult for North Americans with generous hearts to realize the long-term problems that giving certain gifts can cause.   For this reason, Manos Extendidas Honduras (MEH) has established guidelines for gift-giving. 
 

°    Please do not independently or indiscriminately give money, clothes, candy, or gifts directly to local people in the community or congregation, either during or at the end of your mission experience. The best gift is sharing love, joy, and kindness with your new friends.  This is a common guideline for all MEH teams. 

°    Donations are wonderful, and many ministries of the local Honduran churches are made possible by donations brought by mission teams!  Please give all donations your team carries to Honduras directly to the MEH coordinators or to the local pastor.  We encourage that this be done quietly, without fanfare. The pastor will then distribute or use the items as part of the church’s ongoing ministry and programs.  Never give ANY donated items directly to local people. This includes tools and work clothes you leave at the end of your trip. 

°    Giving candy to Honduran children is not appropriate.  Both professional dental care and personal dental hygiene are almost non-existent in many communities.  The momentary pleasure of a piece of candy can cause problems in the long run. 

°    Do not give toys, candy, or other gifts directly to children in the church or community.  (This includes teams who do VBS with local children.)  These kinds of items are wonderful to give directly to the local pastor, who can distribute them at special times.  As a team, brainstorm other ways to show your love for the local kids, besides “giving things”.  Be prepared with songs & games that don’t need the trappings not usually found in poor communities—or come prepared to learn their songs and games—a big hit!!  If you do bring special items to use while playing with kids, but not to give away (like bubbles, frisbees, folding paper, jump-ropes, balls), please watch these items carefully so they don’t “walk away” with certain children.  More than anything, be ready with hugs, smiles, and open hearts.

°    Here are some narrow exceptions to the above guidelines:

†         If a team desires, it is appropriate to leave a remembrance for the host congregation (it is not a gift to an individual member), but teams should avoid extravagant gifts.  Examples include: a banner for worship; a piece of art from your area, a cross, or a framed poster for the wall of the church.  Remember—art and banners should either be without words or with words in Spanish, please.

†         If the team desires, tipping a driver, translator, cooks, and regular housekeeping staff is appropriate within reason.  Tell the pastor you are tipping to keep things transparent.

 

Other gift-giving related guidelines:

°    It is not appropriate for anyone you are working with to ask you to help them personally, no matter if they are lay people, translators, construction workers, or drivers.  For example, a church member at the site where you’re working may ask you to pay for a bike, for school, for the help with medical bills, etc. You should respond that 1) team members are not allowed to give gifts or money, and that 2) the local pastor has items and funds to help people in need.  Inform the MEH coordinators or local pastor of any situations of people asking for things.

°    It is also not appropriate for team members to make comments that can be construed as offers of assistance in the future. This happens all the time!  North Americans do this without thinking, so be careful!  Things like: “You’d love the USA—it is so pretty this time of year!” or “It would be awesome if you had the money to go to college!”  These types of things are said as extensions of a developing friendship, but leave Hondurans disappointed and bewildered as to why these new friends offered something that they don’t follow through on. 

°    Don’t offer to write or send pictures if you are not going to do it.  Giving out your phone number or street address is not a good idea—nor is handing out your business card indiscriminately.  Don’t give your e-mail address unless you are prepared for correspondence.

°    The MEH coordinators and pastors can help you find appropriate channels to give gifts that will benefit entire communities rather than just individuals.  Teams sometimes want to make a donations that will benefit a particular individual, like a scholarship for a particular person the teams meets on the worksite.  What helps the church and pastor much more, is to give a donation to the church for that need in general, i.e. for scholarships to the congregation, in general.  Then the church can determine who has the most need.  The local people who the team gets to know are not always the people in the congregation with the most need, and it can be paternalistic for teams to assume they know best.

°    If you feel the urge to give a special gift, ALWAYS check first with a MEH coordinator or the local pastor to discuss its appropriateness.

 

By asking that you don’t give gifts, we are hoping to avoid:   

§         Expectations of possible handouts that get in the way of authentic relationships.

§         Unintentionally creating jealousy and division in a community.

§         The dynamics of paternalism and power imbalance that inevitably occur when one group hands out and the other group only receives.

§         Skewed expectations of the next group of North Americans that might come.

§         The temptation of short-term fixes in a community instead of examining the root causes of poverty.

§         The immediate awkwardness that comes when a group starts giving out things in a community.  Inevitably, a mob scene happens, with North Americans feeling overwhelmed and Hondurans either feeling left -out, or that they need to push to get something.  The opportunity to receive something for free creates a huge “splash” in poor communities, but does little to address the underlying reasons for the poverty.  We suggest that you work as a group, before or during your trip, to think about what you have to give as a team and where you would like it to be used by a community.   

 

Updated Feb. 2005