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Just a thought here.
I was on my umpteenth deployment to Latin America and we were doing our usual assistance missions with fixing up local schools, med facilities, etc.
It was a Saturday morning and we had a bunch of American soldiers down at the local school painting it.
I looked around outside during a break, and the school grounds were full of the kids' parents, watching the gringos paint their kids' school.
Now don't get me wrong, I think assistance to the indig is a big part of what we do, and the kids certainly deserved it. But if the parents of the kids didn't think the school needed paint badly enough to grab a U.S.G. purchased brush and pitch in on a day off, I am not sure that we should.
In the future, we agreed to do the technical and major mechanical work, and to purchase materials for a "community day", if the locals wanted to help clean up and paint, then we would work alongside them. If not, it was no big deal.
Probably back to the old "teach a man to fish...." line.
Just my .02.
TR
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"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat." - President Theodore Roosevelt, 1910
De Oppresso Liber 01/20/2025
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