Poverty tourism: Why it is not as ugly as it sounds

Poverty tourism: Why it is not as ugly as it sounds

Last week I read The Case Against Sharing, a contribution to medium in which Airbnb, Lyft and similar services were called "Big Sharing". The sentence immediately set up my neck hair.

It drips from cynicism, takes something really very nice and reduces something soulless: a corporate vehicle that only exists to create money. "Big Sharing" erupts the phenomenon of real parts.

it implies that it is not so much a phenomenon than a board strategy that was put together with the only purpose to make the individual a commodity. For me it shows how powerful an ugly term can be and how instinctively our reaction is.

That brought me to another equally ugly concept: poverty tourism.

"poverty tourism", "slum tourism" or "poorism" summon images of privileged children who despite their best intentions harm more than benefits - as the former voluntourist Pippa Biddle capture so concise in this article.

The terms are reminiscent of pictures of rich tourists who happily climb into their off -road vehicles to starve the toothless locals for a day, all in all just a few stages over that terrible photo shoot in Vogue India a few years ago

But here is: I don't think poverty tourism is bad. I believe that in most cases it leads to understanding, empathy and a sense of perspectives that rarely gained in the developed world.

I say that because I would now be another person if I hadn't spent a month in Bangladesh as a 13-year-old. I would hang more on the things I bought with money, I would spend more time to deal with my problems, and I would most likely have given up my job to travel with my backpack over the Pacific.

I would certainly not donate as much to fantastic non -profit organizations as Watsi or use them for other people. I think you can say with certainty that my experience at 13 helped me a lot and helped others to a lesser extent.

Most people I know who have seen extreme poverty can remember a single moment who drove everything home. For me it was one of the village children - a child I swim with, played and laughed - to watch it rummaged in one of our garbage bags and fished two bread crusts.

We fed the local children whenever we could, and from that point on we also began to bury our hygiene articles in the ground so that they were no longer pushed around with the leftover food that were later brought out.

Maybe my experience was not "tourism" because I lived in my family in my father's childhood village, but the lessons I have learned can be learned by many other people in many other places.

I do not think that on a jeep tour through the slums of Mumbai or a guided walk through the favelas of Rio you can gain a nuanced experience, but if you really take your time to interact with locals and learn something about your life, then "poverty tourism". “ - as ugly as it sounds - can enrich your life and that of others.

Personally, I look forward to meeting people who are different from me. See, there was a time - for a very long time - that the only people from the middle class I had to do was my teachers at school.

at the age of 4 to 18 years old belonged to the working class with whom I spoke. Now the spit has turned completely. All my friends and almost all I speak to every day are formed and belong to the middle class.

Most of them are very knowledgeable and deeply interesting, but we all worry about the same things, we are outraged by the same things and feel encouraged by the same things.

I want to meet people who live a different life who change my perspective and maybe me. If that means spending time in a slum or a favela, then I'll do it. It will probably change me completely again - but that's the amazing thing about traveling.

Mission statement: Atlas & Boots

 .