Sunday, April 13, 2008

Word of the Day: poverty tourist

poverty tourist (n.) – Not to be confused with a development tourist (who works in development), a poverty tourist is one who comes on a holiday to a development country to see how terribly poor the poor are, and how wonderfully helpful the development industry is. Some poverty tourism can definitely be classified as a cultural exchange and has merit for both the tourist and the visited community. However, the exposure to poverty and development is generally too short and superficial to communicate the complexities of poverty and development. Poverty tourism is often coupled with donations by the tourist which increase the degree to which he/she identify with the visited development projects. These projects can range from meaningful training and employment generation projects to useless showcase do-good initiatives.

Anyone interested in coming to Rwanda for poverty tourism can look at New Dawn Associates who, despite my reservations, do appear to be doing some good work.

2 comments:

xy said...

Maurice - was looking for your personal porn site but my searches keep landing me here. What's the deal, where's the development porno?? I'm sure there would be a market for it in Rwanda. Keep building up that private sector baby.

Maurice said...

I only do one-on-one live prono webcasts on requests. Its a highly exclusive service.