I don’t want a little girl in Ghana, or Sri Lanka, or Indonesia to think of me when she wakes up each morning. I don’t want her to thank me for her education or medical care or new clothes. Even if I am providing the funds to get the ball rolling, I want her to think about her teacher, community leader, or mother. I want her to have a hero who she can relate to — who looks like her, is part of her culture, speaks her language, and who she might bump into on the way to school one morning.

From “The Problem With Little White Girls (and Boys): Why I Stopped Being A Voluntourist” by Pippa Biddle (also published on PippaBiddle.com), an interesting coming of age reflection essay on outgrowing the white savior complex.