Word: harms
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...says Lucerito L. Ortiz ’10, PBHA’s outreach officer and a former Summer Urban Program (SUP) counselor. “You can have good intentions, but without the context and history of where you’re working, you can do more harm than good...
...Many believe there are cases when volunteers should be cautious about volunteering at all because they might end up doing more harm than good...
...There’s a range of programs where it’s hard to do any substantial harm, like cleaning up the Charles River,” says Christopher Winship, a sociology professor. “But the other end of the continuum is, say, working with a second or third grader and helping them learn to read. Perhaps, for them, the more fundamental issue is learning to trust adults and form strong relationships in their lives, and if you blow it on that, in a sense, you may have made things much worse...
...it’s not only the one-day projects that have this problem. Long-term service programs can cause equal harm. Tutoring programs in particular can be risky because students sometimes sever ties with children they have tutored for a semester or year...
...This doesn’t mean that the possibility of harm should be a deterrent from doing any kind of service at all. The solution, Winship believes, is to thoughtfully question the program itself and one’s own motives...