Showing posts with label poverty tourism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label poverty tourism. Show all posts

Friday, January 30, 2009

My Broken Heart

I wrote a post on Compassion's blog today about Slumdog Millionaire. I meant everything I wrote in it, but to be honest, I wrote it from an emotionally detached place.

I'd encourage you to go read it before you read the rest of the this post ...

Did you read it?

What do you think about the question at the end? See, I'm really wrestling with this idea of poverty tourism. Where exactly is the line between educating ourselves about poverty and exploiting the poor?

A warning about the following video:
It will break your heart. It will take guts to watch it. I truthfully have never seen a video that broke my heart so completely as this one.

I'm not posting it to be emotionally manipulative. I don't want to evoke your pity or guilt. What I want to do is help you understand what poverty looks like.



You will not see videos or photographs like this from Compassion. I didn't post this as an employee of Compassion. I posted it because it helped me to emotionally connect with the work I do every day.

If during this video your heart was broken for the poor, please don't ignore that.

Do something about it.