Poverty Inc. Movie

• I agree with many statements in the film
  • People [in developing countries] are not stupid.
  • We [Westerners who care about helping] need more than good intentions.
  • The aid industry portrays the poor as helpless and perpetuates harmful stereotypes and over-generalizations in an attempt to raise money.

Yet this movie seems to have driven home a point that I don’t completely agree with: The old framework of the aid industry must go, vanish, evaporate, and leave businessmen and women to be successful on their own. If any kind of “aid” exists, it must be with the people, not for the people.

One explanation for the stagnation in developing countries that was briefly mentioned but not adequately addressed in the film was corruption. Corrupt administrative and government officials are a massive issue in many African countries and other developing countries. While government corruption wasn’t the subject of the film and didn’t fit neatly into the film’s objectives, I think it was largely overlooked and is a glaring loophole in the chain of foreign aid. Chimmanda Adichie’s “Danger of a Single Story” warns us that there are many stories of poverty, immigrants, and colonization. There are also many stories for the aid industry, and disappointingly, the film attempted to portray only one.

David Mills article

“Those who refer so happily to creative destruction are never themselves among the creatively destroyed.”

Mills says the efficient restructuring of companies that leads to the creative destruction of jobs “does not feed them, house them, clothe them, educate them, pay the doctor and the pharmacist, the gas and electric bills, the rare family dinner out at the cheap diner.” In other words, he is conveying that while creative destruction may be healthy for the country in the grand scheme of things, it offers no solace for those in its path of destruction. Perhaps a similar argument can be made about eliminating or greatly reducing free aid to developing countries. While cutting off supplies of food, goods, and technology may be what is best for developing countries in the long-run (excluding times of natural disaster or emergency), it shouts a message to those sinking in abject poverty, “We see you, and we have access to life boats, but YOU MUST DROWN!! For we must keep moving toward the shore, where greater prosperity for all awaits.” This moral conundrum is why Poverty, Inc. made me so uncomfortable. It is easy for persons in the ship and persons living with plenty to attack the so-called “old framework” for aid. They are not gasping for air. They do not sleep with hunger pangs.

When the film did touch upon extremely poor areas, such as the slums in Cité Soleil, Haiti, or Kibera (in Nairobi, Kenya), it did so cautiously – either from a bird’s-eye view or through the mouth of a shop owner in the slum (someone well off in comparison with others that have no source of income.) The film aimed to inspire pity for small business owners slighted by poor legal systems or an influx of Western aid. While we must be sympathetic to the plight of these individuals, it seemed to me that the film wanted to shield us from those most in need. I have walked through Kibera slums on three separate occasions. It is indescribable. I have volunteered at a refugee site on the Uganda-Tanzania border called “Sango Bay,” where donated food from USAID is the lifeline to families that have no income or place in society. We’ve all encountered beggars, but never have I experienced such heart-wrenching pain from observing desolate and morbid conditions like I felt in these two places. Do not misunderstand me. Poverty, Inc. made some insightful points about how we need to rethink aid. But I believe it presented a rosy picture of solving charity gone wrong that conveniently ignored the everyday cries, whimpering, and wailing that resoundingly echo through the broken windows and feces-filled walkways of Cité Soleil, Kibera, Sango Bay, and places like them.