Our approach focuses to see poverty- affected people becoming independent and breaking the traditional role of western donors and African recipients. This is very important to us, as we have seen repeatedly, that the western approach of  providing resources (ideally or materially or financially) reinforces the paralyzing feeling of powerlessness, dependency and the conviction that the poverty- affected people cannot improve their situation on their own.

Our approach therefore focuses on identifying and breaking these thought patterns. We want to ensure that the initiative and competence for change comes from the affected people themselves, and not from a western organization.

We gratefully see that the participants of our training rediscover their potential, and find solutions to problems that we cannot even see. Retrospective, the participants say: "We did it all on our own, actMED actually didn't do anything ... now we might change any of our concerns, because we can!"

This is how we avoid dependencies and disappear to the background. This is pretty much the opposite of how organization are usually built. We try to avoid what we have identified as poverty-promoting in development aid, and we really want to take our Christian faith seriously, that says: Not your own influence, but service should be your hallmark. Therefore, instead of  building our organization big, we work to expand the capacity of others.

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