Apparently poverty is a business like any other. It might not be very profitable for those who have to suffer through it; but there is still money to be made. For decades many people have known about those who skim off of money meant for charity. But now as the number of poor people around seems to expand since the financial crisis of 2007, business leaders have found more and more ways to make a buck off of those without one. These practices are all along the food chain from mom-and-pop businesses right up to the financial titans that run the world.
At the top you can consider the big bank JPMorgan. Since the crisis they have made billions of the financial service of food stamps for Americans. Literally billions each year were made off of American people who couldn't afford to feed themselves. As to this windfall improving things for American workers...well not so much. A lot of the jobs from these types of project are done by low wage workers in India.
If one carefully considers every step and product involved in the process of this service, it is apparent that it is not only poverty servicing but poverty creating. Yet from the crude oil that made the plastic that food stamp recipients have in their cards, down to the cash registers ringing them up at the grocery store there is production and profit. In most steps globalism has worked like a curtain to separate the two...and many sides involved are ignorant of the full picture. Food stamps are just a particularly interesting case study, and perhaps even a positive on one balance.
Ignorance of how globalization works for most involved is psychologically easier. As long as each person involved in production is isolated from a larger picture, they can feel that what they are doing is morally neutral. The business class claims workers are not in fact ignorant, and they could work at something else if they ever had objections: they assume democracy and freedom. But the appearance of democracy is maintained by a dictatorship of ignorance. With enough manipulation people can even become ignorant of what is right in front of their faces every day. In this world of easy ignorance I am impressed by the number of relatively privileged young people I meet who want to do something to make the world a better place or at least understand what the heck really goes on. Unfortunately, their impulses are often hijacked by an ever expanding industry that profits off misery in quite a different way than JPMorgan.
Thousands of young privileged folk fan out from the first world all over the globe to volunteer. A few commit to doing substantial work with reputable organizations like Peace Corps. Others, perhaps guilty about their ability to take lavish vacations look for shorter projects. An entire industry has sprung up around these sometimes naive younger folks. Not every young person is naive. Many pay to volunteer as a way to pad their resumes or education applications. In the case of such self aggrandizing volunteers, they are fully aware they are paying for a service. But what of the volunteer who actually sought to make the world a better place? They will likely experience anger and frustration. They may in fact be scared away from ever reaching out again.
More and more voluntourist organizations seem to be operating with less and less concern for any actual poor people. Over my time in Africa I met many young Westerners who had been sucked into the schemes of such organizations only to realize that they themselves were one of the mechanisms through which such organizations profit. Not only are poor children used for profit as they become living advertising jingles to milk donations from wealthy donors, but middle class Western kids are used for profit as well. One woman I spoke to volunteered in a Township in South Africa. She paid an embarrassing amount supposedly for her own accommodation, and improvement of the local school. When she got there her accommodations were so poor she privately paid upgrade her situation by joining a backpackers hostel nearby. The children at the local school didn't even get soap in the bathrooms and neither did she. When she made some off the cuff calculations on how much money the organization made per volunteer she was astounded. She furiously decided to trail the money, but hit a wall of silence. She was informed that the organization did not have to disclose any financial information to the public including it's volunteers. In spite of misleading information she had received, the organization was in fact for profit, and therefore supposedly had every right to make as much profit as possible...even if it meant keeping a local African school as decrepit as possible presumably to inspire even more donations.
Another volunteer I met stayed at the accommodations his organization provided him. he described it as a four bedroom house holding 25 volunteers who all paid to be there. There was no security, and given the presumable demographics of the group it isn't surprising that the place was the target of frequent break-ins. The man mentioned that no one who worked for the organization actually stayed there. The resident volunteers were really being robbed twice over: by the local thieves, and also by the organization they worked for. He was like many young volunteers naive. He found out about the opportunity over the internet. Without having set foot in Africa he had set up an experience for himself there. But if he had simply set foot in Africa he might have saved himself a lot of trouble. There is a genuine need in Africa, just as in the USA for volunteers. It's impossible not to find people who could use some help. It's heartbreaking. I considered putting a picture of myself sharing my birthday party with some orphans in here, but then I realized I didn't want to publish up a picture of these kids being served food by me. No one needs to know they were hungry orphans for ever and ever verifiable by internet search engine. But voluntourist organizations have no such consideration for kids. Some even grab kids unknown to volunteers for photo-ops.
Not every voluntourist is convinced of their own benevolence...but few seem to understand all the ways that they are feeding a for-profit machine. Charity gives the facade of redemption to the cruelest forms of globalized capitalism. Westerners are encouraged to see themselves as saviors of the world's poor as opposed to the ones who perpetrate a system that impoverishes them. It's an easy sell. In looking at situations of conflict almost all humans see themselves as victims or bystanders. Few understand themselves as the perpetrators of any problem. Oddly though, many people see a good deed done by anything less than pure altruism as so tainted by bad intentions as to be negative. I submit this blog to the world in the hopes of exposing the less than altruistic reasons behind many voluntourist organizations...I hope young people find other ways to volunteer.
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