Today I attended the screening of Poverty, Inc, a documentary about poverty around the world.  I wasn’t sure what to think about this event going in.  I kind of expected to walk away feeling really bummed out by the state of the world because of how poverty affected people.  I half expected to be told to donate money to different aid projects to help those in poverty.  I didn’t expect what I saw, but to be honest, I also wasn’t surprised by it.

At the beginning, the film confronted our ideas of poverty, reminding us that all of these people in poverty?  They are actually people.  And people have the ability to get out of poverty, given the rights and resources they need.  But our world view tends to perpetuate a sense of paternalism about third world countries, places with more extreme poverty.  And in fact, our systems of aid have extended and continued poverty, rather than curing or preventing it.

One example given in the film was with regards to rice in Haiti.  People use to grow their own rice, but it was a luxury item.  People would eat rice maybe one, two times a week.  But then governments and NGO’s started providing US rice as aid, for free.  This meant that rice became one of the most commonly eaten foods, but also that the people who used to grow rice were now out of a job.  This was just one of the ways the US wanted Haiti to be a consumer of US products.  With food coming in from the US for cheaper prices, Haitians couldn’t afford to keep their farms, and moved into the cities in search of work, living in slums.  And then when the earthquake happened, the cities were devastated.

A theme of this film was regarding how the people working in aid businesses and in other countries benefit the most from helping other countries with aid.  The other countries become reliant on the aid because it puts their people out of work, and when people are out of work, they fall deeper into poverty.  If aid could come in the form of helping people get jobs that would pay, rather than taking jobs away, the system would be much more effective and people in poverty would be escaping it.

One story in the film that really touched me was about how orphans in Haiti aren’t necessarily actually without parents.  They are sometimes poverty orphans, whose parents could no longer support them and gave them up to an orphanage where they would get a place to sleep, food to eat, and an education.  The story of the two people who went down to Haiti to try to help orphans in an orphanage, but who ended up realizing that it was the parents who they should be helping, was very inspiring.  By helping the parents get work, the parents could support the children themselves, and families would not have to be separated.

Another thing that stayed with me was the fact that whenever they talked about families, it was always a mother and her children, or a father and his children, but never a complete family of mother, father, and children.  There were no images of it, no mention of it.  I left wondering if in these poverty stricken countries, it is common to not see full family units, or if the portrayed image was just not the full picture.

At the end of the film, we got a chance to speak with the co-producer Mark Weber over skype and ask him some questions.  It was great to hear from a producer of the film, and to get more sides of the story.  We got to hear about how Mark got interested in poverty in the first place, dating back to when he was in college and on the boxing team at his school.

When I left, I left thinking about how I would like to be able to do more for people in poverty, but shaken by the knowledge that donating money to relief and aid programs might not be the best way to help.  But Mark told us all at the end that if we all pursue what we are interested in, hopefully we can do some good in the world with it.