Chronic Poverty Needs Compassion Not Criticism

When I was in Brazil shooting an educational documentary, I took a public tour of a favela in San Salvadore. To gain access, my tour operator called the local drug lord and asked for permission. He agreed and I captured some unbelievable footage. Then, a couple months later, while in South Africa, I took a similar tour through the overcrowded townships on the outskirts of Cape Town; the result of years of apartheid. Then, a month later, in India, my party of 50 were the first Westerners invited to a dirt-poor Dalit village called Kodur. The communal living offered us a chance to change stereotypes and develop friendships.

Many of these memories were rekindled reading an article in the New York Times today called "Slum Visits: Tourism or Voyeurism?" by Eric Weiner. At first, like Weiner, I too felt wrong ogling other's misfortunes, like a mom scrubbing clothes with an antique washboard and rusty bucket or children in schools with no desks and few books sitting on cold concrete to learn. It felt intrusive and unethical and it upset me. But, this was a up-close and personal tour and we had translators with us to break down the language barrier and everyone knew better than to take a photo without asking for permission.

But, surprisingly, few locals asked for handouts but instead offered up homemade gifts for sharing. As the tours wore on, it became clear that none of the underprivileged wanted sympathy, pity or charity; rather, they were hoping we'd take away an understanding of 'developmental poverty' or as they say in economics, 'the cycle of poverty' and that would change attitudes.

So, for what it's worth, I'd like to promote "poorism," as it's being called, as accurately changing many misguided and misinformed opinions and ignorant ideas about the poor. Those who perceive the poor as lazy, immoral or incapable should be the first to book tickets. The dozens of poor I randomly interviewed in Brazil, India and South Africa were proud, hard-working and virtuous. Theirs were complicated stories of discrimination and disadvantages as a result of being poor.

But, they knew and we discovered that persistent tours through their gritty neighborhoods aims to change that. With enough interest, awareness will spread and opportunities will open up. Opportunities like financial lending programs (Finca), education and effective philanthropy for medical, psychological and drug treatment centers would be a great start.

Like Harold Goodwin, director of the International Center of Responsible Tourism, told Weiner, "Ignoring poverty won’t make it go away. Tourism is one of the few ways... to understand what poverty means, to just kind of turn a blind eye and pretend the poverty doesn’t exist seems to me a very denial of our humanity.”