The Economist:
At our orientation session, we introduced ourselves and explained why we volunteered for this particular project. I went first. I said I volunteered because I thought that learning about how these women respond to their extreme financial constraints would be interesting.
Everyone else said they thought their experiences would be helpful (most were lawyers or in human resources). I realised I was the only one who did not say I was there to help homeless women. I wondered if that made me a bad person. But (and I may be rationalising here) I found something presumptuous about the idea I could swoop in from my comfortable life and sort out these women’s financial woes. I might know about economics and finance, but I know nothing of what it’s like to be a homeless single mother.
Read it all. See also the related blog post.