I was recently reading some books about the pros and cons of giving aid to alleviate deep poverty. The books contained entertaining arguments on the subject, but what I found appalling is the way the authors talked about poor people of the world as if they were a special race different from you and I.

I have been to many places and met many people rich and poor, educated and uneducated, able and unable to read or write, coming from different cultures, speaking different languages and I can tell you that the “primitive” Achuar of the Amazonian jungle is no different from the CEO of a large US corporation. We are all human, from a single human race.

So what is this human I am talking about?

Many years ago, I read a book from some Harvard economists who had been hired by Mikhail Gorbachev to transition the Soviet Union into a free economy and were trying to understand why they utterly failed. Their explanation was that the economic model used did not take into account key human characteristics such as the need to learn, to form long-term relationships and to defend key values. A very wise glimpse into the nature of people.

People all need to trust that they will be physically and emotionally safe, then they want to create strong ties with other humans and discover the world.

To help better understand the nature of people, I will tell how I discover people whoever they are, wherever they are. First I believe that every human being is a gem that needs to be uncovered. This gem has so many facets that it would take many life times to fully grasp it, so I just chose to take a peek at one or two facets and by doing that I become a richer person.

The discovery process is always the same. Creating an atmosphere of trust is what needs to happen first. For trust to develop, it is important that the person does not feel judged, senses you are trying to understand them and that you are partly succeeding. To do that you must focus on the person’s emotions. An understanding smile may just be what is needed. Humans need to feel safe, to feel accepted and when they do they will let you in but remember they are very vigilant: any mistake and the gem disappears.

Another important part of establishing trust is to show trust. Trust is a two-way street and is rarely given unilaterally. If you want to discover someone you must trust them and make yourself vulnerable. It takes quite a lot of self-confidence and quite a lot of courage but becomes a lot easier with practice and it is really worth it.

Once you have been let in, the discovery process starts. They will try to understand you and your view of the world using their own frame of reference created by their culture and their environment and you will do the same. If both frames of reference are similar, discovery will happen very fast, although even small differences might lead to misunderstanding.

When it comes to very large differences like when I met with the Achuars who had lived all their lives in the Ecuadorian jungle weeks on foot from Western civilization, discovery is totally dependent on bridging the gap between frames of reference. For me the best approach has been to focus on letting them discovering me and, as they do so, to learn about their frames of reference and about my own.

There is a lot of head shaking and intense faces as people are trying to understand but there is nothing like the smile that illuminates the face of a human being that just learned something new about the world, about you.

As I followed my quest to discover more people with different backgrounds, I have been deeply touched by so many human being! I now better understand my own frame of reference, and I have built up the wisdom that allows me to give guidance to those who try to make a difference in this world including alleviating deep poverty in the Third World.