Poverty Tourism and its Consequences3 min read

We all know or have heard of someone who went to a “third world” country for their own spiritual journey. Nowadays, it sounds like something you have to do in your life. Take a gap year, travel around the world. Just get a backpack and go. Easy, right?
But it can be damaging and unethical.
There are ways to do it right and ways to do it wrong. Surprisingly, social media is filled with the wrong ways.
There is this new trend called Poverty Tourism. How does it work?
You make your backpack, possibly sell all of your belongings, stop renting your place (quite expensive if you live in London) and maybe set up a GoFundMe page to get donations. Don’t worry if you don’t have enough funds because that’s the best way to live the experience, as every guide will tell you.
Then choose a poor country. Mostly people who do this choose South East Asia. Maybe not Japan, because it might be too expensive. How about India?
Go to all the temples, looking for a spiritual awakening. You probably don’t know what it means, but you know this is the right place to find it. Go take a selfie with a cow, if possible try to get someone worshipping it in the picture as well, your followers will be fascinated.
Now, what do you do when your money runs out? As if all the things that I told you so far were not problematic enough, I’ll tell you how it gets worse.
These so called #begpackers start begging. Some of them would have a sign asking for money or food, explaining that they are travelling without money. Now, chances are that in some countries people might be more willing to give you money than giving it to an ‘Untouchable’. Isn’t it wrong to take resources away from someone who really needs it? Someone who didn’t give everything away as a ‘spiritual’ choice.
Others beg for food or hospitality, door by door. It works sometimes. But again they use light, energy and food that most families in the slums struggle to retrieve, with most of them having to share facilities with multiple other families. Again, isn’t it wrong when at the end you just leave them with less than they already had?
There’s now a new trend that allows you to pay for a one night stay in a slum. The founder of the scheme David Bijl, who works in Mumbai for a NGO, thinks that as slums form a big reality of the city, tourists should visit them. Some families are happy to host them.
Although all of these help the tourists get a wider insight of the reality, how does it really benefit the locals? Apart from the ones paid to host them, their reality is not in any way made better. Whatever spiritual awakening the tourists have, these people will still be poor. When the #begpackers come home there’s where the story of the locals end.