Are we really welcome?
Sara recommended the following article. It reminded her of the 三下乡 activities that some universities arrange for their students to experience rural China. It also raises questions about our Volunteer Program. We try to prevent such exploitation by examining the motivation of volunteers during selection, but can more be done from the side of the community? How can we ensure that what we do is really welcomed by villagers? How can we even find out whether it is or not?
SLUM VISITS: Tourism or Voyeurism?
Michael Cronin’s job as a college admissions officer took him to India two or three times a year, so he had already seen the usual sites — temples, monuments, markets — when one day he happened across a flier advertising “slum tours.”
“It just resonated with me immediately,” said Mr. Cronin, who was staying at a posh Taj Hotel in Mumbai where, he noted, a bottle of Champagne cost the equivalent of two years’ salary for many Indians. “But I didn’t know what to expect.”
Soon, Mr. Cronin, 41, found himself skirting open sewers and ducking to avoid exposed electrical wires as he toured the sprawling Dharavi slum, home to more than a million. He joined a cricket game and saw the small-scale industry, from embroidery to tannery, that quietly thrives in the slum. “Nothing is considered garbage there,” he said. “Everything is used again.”
Mr. Cronin was briefly shaken when a man, “obviously drunk,” rifled through his pockets, but the two-and-a-half-hour tour changed his image of India. “Everybody in the slum wants to work, and everybody wants to make themselves better,” he said.
Slum tourism, or “poorism,” as some call it, is catching on. From the favelas of Rio de Janeiro to the townships of Johannesburg to the garbage dumps of Mexico, tourists are forsaking, at least for a while, beaches and museums for crowded, dirty — and in many ways surprising — slums. When a British man named Chris Way founded Reality Tours and Travel in Mumbai two years ago, he could barely muster enough customers for one tour a day. Now, he’s running two or three a day and recently expanded to rural areas.
Slum tourism isn’t for everyone. Critics charge that ogling the poorest of the poor isn’t tourism at all. It’s voyeurism. The tours are exploitative, these critics say, and have no place on an ethical traveler’s itinerary.
“Would you want people stopping outside of your front door every day, or maybe twice a day, snapping a few pictures of you and making some observations about your lifestyle?” asked David Fennell, a professor of tourism and environment at Brock University in Ontario. Slum tourism, he says, is just another example of tourism’s finding a new niche to exploit. The real purpose, he believes, is to make Westerners feel better about their station in life. “It affirms in my mind how lucky I am — or how unlucky they are,” he said.
Not so fast, proponents of slum tourism say. Ignoring poverty won’t make it go away. “Tourism is one of the few ways that you or I are ever going to understand what poverty means,” said Harold Goodwin, director of the International Center for Responsible Tourism in Leeds, England. “To just kind of turn a blind eye and pretend the poverty doesn’t exist seems to me a very denial of our humanity.”
The crucial question, Mr. Goodwin and other experts say, is not whether slum tours should exist but how they are conducted. Do they limit the excursions to small groups, interacting respectfully with residents? Or do they travel in buses, snapping photos from the windows as if on safari?
Many tour organizers are sensitive to charges of exploitation. Some encourage — and in at least one case require — participants to play an active role in helping residents. A church group in Mazatlán, Mexico, runs tours of the local garbage dump, where scavengers earn a living picking through trash, some of it from nearby luxury resorts. The group doesn’t charge anything but asks participants to help make sandwiches and fill bottles with filtered water. The tours have proven so popular that during high season the church group has to turn people away. “We see ourselves as a bridge to connect the tourists to the real world,” said Fred Collom, the minister who runs the tours.
By most accounts, slum tourism began in Brazil 16 years ago, when a young man named Marcelo Armstrong took a few tourists into Rocinha, Rio de Janeiro’s largest favela, or shantytown. His company, Favela Tour, grew and spawned half a dozen imitators. Today, on any given day in Rio, dozens of tourists hop in minivans, then motorcycles and venture into places even Brazil’s police dare not tread. Organizers insist the tours are safe, though they routinely check security conditions. Luiz Fantozzi, founder of the Rio-based Be a Local Tours, says that about once a year he cancels a tour for security reasons.
The tours may be safe, but they can be tense. Rajika Bhasin, a lawyer from New York, recalls how, at one point during a favela tour, the guide told everyone to stop taking pictures. A young man approached the group, smiling and holding a cocked gun. Ms. Bhasin said she didn’t exactly feel threatened, “just very aware of my surroundings, and aware of the fact that I was on this guy’s turf.”
Still, she said, the experience, which included visiting galleries featuring the work of local artists, was positive. “Honestly, I would say it was a life-changing experience,” Ms. Bhasin said. Saying she understood the objections, she parried, “It has everything to do with who you are and why you’re going.”
Chuck Geyer, of Reston, Va., arrived for a tour in Mumbai armed with hand sanitizer and the expectation of human misery incarnate. He left with a changed mind. Instead of being solicited by beggars, Mr. Geyer found himself the recipient of gifts: fruit, and dye to smear on his hands and face, as people celebrated the Hindu festival of Holi. “I was shocked at how friendly and gracious these people were,” Mr. Geyer said.
Proponents of slum tourism say that’s the point: to change the reputation of the slums one tourist at a time. Tour organizers say they provide employment for local guides and a chance to sell souvenirs. Chris Way has vowed to put 80 percent of his profits back into the Dharavi slum.
The catch, though, is that Mr. Way’s company has yet to earn a profit on the tours, for which he charges 300 rupees (around $7.50). After receiving flak from the Indian press (“a fair criticism,” Mr. Way concedes), he used his own money to open a community center in the slum. It offers English classes, and Mr. Way himself mentors a chess club. Many of those running favela tours in Brazil also channel a portion of their profits into the slums. Luiz Fantozzi contributes to a school and day-care center.
But slum tourism isn’t just about charity, its proponents say; it also fosters an entrepreneurial spirit. “At first, the tourists were besieged by beggars, but not anymore,” said Kevin Outterson, a law professor from Boston who has taken several favela tours. Mr. Fantozzi has taught people, Mr. Outterson said, “that you’re not going to get anything from my people by begging, but if you make something, people are going to buy it.”
Even critics of slum tourism concede it allows a few dollars to trickle into the shantytowns, but say that’s no substitute for development programs.
Mr. Fennell, the professor of tourism in Ontario, wonders whether the relatively minuscule tourist revenue can make a difference. “If you’re so concerned about helping these people, then write a check,” he said.
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Jikky says:
Added on April 7th, 2008 at %1:%Apr %pI think one way to find out whether we are welcomed by villagers, it to pay visits to the village/community before we send our teams there and do our own ‘Community Research’. Find out:
- What the village is like, what people do, what the circumstances are like, what keeps them busy, whether there are local key informants/institutions such as 村委会 or village heads to talk with, (orientation);
- Whether the locals have their own community activities already (if yes, what kind, how often, when, who participates, who organizes them);
- Whether the locals have experience with other ‘outsiders’(university students, other NGO’s, research groups, etc.) who went there (if yes, what did they do, when, with whom, for how long, how did the locals experience that, what were the expectations beforehand, what did the stay of ‘outsiders’ leave behind, positive/negative effects on local community, wishes the locals have after the ‘outsides’ left, etc);
- What the local understanding is of RCEF as an organization (our mission, goal, strategy);
- What the local understanding is of what RCEF comes to do in their villages (what kind of projects, with who, when, how long, activities involved);
- What expectations they have towards RCEF in the future (what they think we can do for them, help them with, etc.);
I think by researching these questions, you can find out a bit about their perception of RCEF or ‘outsiders who come to do something’ in general.
Ting Zhou says:
Added on April 7th, 2008 at %1:%Apr %pthanks for the article sara. it made me think of the piece by ilya ilyich that diane had us read.
i’ve also wondered about the questions in your email. during vp 2006, the villagers of dbq hebei did not resist our presence there, but at the same time, i also got the sense that we weren’t exactly welcome with wide open arms. this is not to say that we didn’t have any solid supporters though. the effect that our vp program had on kids like zhang haixiao and chen ying was irrefutable. they embodied that change that rcef aspire to make in the rural children, and in my opinion, made the entire vp effort worthwhile. but at the same time, i’ve also gotten disparaging remarks from some of the parents and the teachers, who see the vp as a distraction from the students’ mainstream education. one principle pointed out that vp 2005 took time away from his students to complete their summer vacation assignments. another teacher flat out told me that we were not welcome back to her school because of the vandalism that took place during the vp. a few of the parents thought that rcef wasn’t really teaching anything substantial to their children. granted that a lot of these issues may be addressed with better communication and training in conflict-resolution, i feel that this also raises a separate issue: when the responses we get for vp differ among the villagers, how can we accurately extrapolate the success and support of our program in face of diverging opinions? whose opinion matters more?
no doubt that vp would gain more support if we put in more effort in connecting with the local communities, and tailor our vp programs to the existing community structures, much like what jikky suggested in her response. having a good understanding of the community’s expectation for our program and volunteer is extremely helpful when we evaluate our work in the end. here are a couple of my thoughts on this whole bit, based on my experience from the 2006 vp
1. program evaluation: there was an overall recognition of the importance of evaluation (ie: we talked a lot about the process and ways of evaluation), but we weren’t given any useful tools (ie: an actual survey that we can hand to the kids or a list of questions we can ask the villagers). consider providing each site team with some concrete form of evaluating their performance, even though they are welcome to try out other methods of evaluation.
2. getting a truthful answer: chinese people can be so notoriously diplomatic in order to save face or avoid conflicts and hurting people’s feelings. my mom would bitch to me about how she hates it when a certain relative visits, but then would voluntarily invite that relative to stay at our house. so another concern is: how can we know how the villagers honestly feel about what we do? i found that home visits offer an opportunity to find out the parents’ opinion of our program: “what has your child told you about what he/she is doing in our program? how do you think he/she feels about our classes? how do YOU feel about what we do? no really, honestly!”
3. using local connections: i think that having the support of local village officials and teachers is incredible useful, not only for getting to know the communities, but also for obtaining honest feedback. while parents and teachers may not be 100% up front with giving feedback to rcef volunteers, they may be less inhibited in front of people from their own communities. we can either ask the village head to informally poll the public opinion during the next village meeting, or we can ask the local teachers to ask the parents what they think about rcef during the school’s parent teacher conference.
i gave this article to a fellow med student, who went to africa in 2006 and knew about the slum tourism. i don’t think that it is unethical to make people learn about the lives of the less fortunate in the world. but it is absolutely important to realize how “affluent foreigners” can tremendously debilitate an impoverished community by breeding dependency and allowing beggarism. it wrenches my heart to see so many little kids begging for money on the streets of beijing, knowing that they can rely on the good intentions and pity of others. what i find so admirable about rcef, is that it is comprised largely of people who are driven not by their pity for “these poor rural children who can’t afford to go to school,” but by their belief in the potential of these incredibly bright rural children.
Jikky says:
Added on April 7th, 2008 at %1:%Apr %pAfter spending time in 4 our of school sites, my general impression is quite positive actually. The 9 teachers I spoke to (who all attended the VP training) wish for us to come back every year, most of them say 2 weeks out of the whole summer is too short. And 3 of the 4 schools mentioned themselves that they wish we would place one of our volunteers there for at least a year to teach and work together with the local teachers. The teachers said they see us as complementary to their work; “You guys can do what we normally cannot do, you can teach the students the creative subjects such as Arts, Music, PE and Theatre. We don’t have the time nor the knowledge to teach these subjects”. They all realize that the students miss this ‘well round development’. They would like to see it in the students, but they don’t feel like they can do it themselves under the current education system and that’s why they like our presence in the summer to ‘complement’ what they can’t do.
All the teachers liked to interact with our volunteers, to spend time with them, to learn from them. Although being with the volunteers did give some teachers a sense of ‘less worthiness’ because they felt less educated, less knowledgeable and less experienced about the outside world, it was in turn an extra motivation for them to work harder, to learn more and to get more out of their lives. So from my experience, I do think that we’re very welcomed by the teachers.
Of course there were some issues here and there: one teacher said better agreements should be made between the hosts and the volunteers who stay at their homes; that volunteers should know more about local customs and locals way of life; one teacher said he could see that some volunteers were really serious in their work and that some were in the village ‘just to look around’ or ‘to play’; one teacher wished our volunteers would be more professional in the subjects they teach, etc. These probably can be solved with better communication and more background information about the sites like Ting said, and better training and selection of our volunteers where we’re already working on.
Another thing is that teachers, students and villagers don’t always know what RCEF does, where we stand for, what our mission and philosophy is, etc. For all of the teachers it was quite vague, they do relate it to terms such as ‘quality education’, ‘well round development’ and ’student centered teaching’, but none of them could really give the total picture. I think this is also related to the fact that we ourselves are continuously developing, changing and improving our mission statement. Teachers also said themselves that they know that we are a young organization and that we’re looking for our own ‘way’ of carrying out projects.
Concerning the parents, I think this is a hard case because I think parents (plus teachers in general) and us have different perceptions of what we like the students to learn. I think many parents still like to see more ‘tangible’ results such as good grades, the product, and we go more for the process. So although if a student changed significantly through VP in the eyes of our volunteers, the local teachers who participated and through my eyes as an evaluator (because we value the skills), it does not mean that the parents will agree what their child has changed (because they value the direct outcome in grades). Sometimes I also ask myself -although it might sound a bit harsh- what do these parents actually know about their our child? Not all the parents seem to care about what happens at school, how their child is doing, what their children learn, and what skills they got, as long as they get good grades, they’re fine and satisfied. I think Diane also wrote a bit about this in another blog post (’Meet the parents’). I also heard myself that some parents and teachers think that the children are not learning something substantial during VP, but I think we have different perspectives on what this substantial thing is.
@ 1) program evaluation: I totally agree that we should have evaluation tools, that we should keep on using them and improving them. I also think that sometimes it is said too easily than done. In my opinion, it is not something that every volunteer can ‘just do’ with either handing out surveys or a list of questions. It also involves the skills that someone should have to get the right and valid answers - what environment should you create for students to fill in surveys, or how should you approach villagers/parents to know what you want to know? Volunteers could get a crash course in this during the VP training, but we need the trainers for that, and the time. Or we should have evaluators going back to the sites, but we also need manpower for that.
@ 2) getting a truthful answer: also this involves some skills in trying to get the answer you want, if possible seen the cultural/hierarchical context as Ting mentioned. I sometimes also wonder whether we can get that ‘true’ answer from parents. The ones I talked to, also general villagers, usually say ”hen hao hen hao” when asking what they think of our VP. I don’t always think that they are just being polite, I think that many of them just really don’t know what else to say because they weren’t really interested or involved in the first place. I don’t think they’re used to being asked their opinions and therefore don’t always think too much about something, or form an opinion about something. I think that in our society we are taught to express our opinion and form our own thoughts, while local villagers might not be so used to that, so they might get overwhelmed as well. I’m not saying that none of the villagers have an opinion, because there are (the village head, village committees, etc), but parents in general might not have given it so much thought. I do find that men have more to say or the express than women.
I also experienced this with children: they are not so used to express their opinion, and that someone who is older asks for their thoughts about something serious. They can be afraid of the interviewer, they can be afraid of the interview setting, they can be afraid to answer the wrong answers and therefore tell me ’socially desirable answers’. Also here it involves the right setting, the right attitude, the right questions.
Diane Geng (blog author) says:
Added on April 9th, 2008 at %1:%Apr %pIvan Illich told college student volunteers, “Use your money, your status and your education to travel in Latin America. Come to look, come to climb our mountains, to enjoy our flowers. Come to study. But do not come to help.” In rural China, if we want to be students, it’s not hard to find villagers with all sorts of interesting expertise to learn from. A friend of RCEF is one example. He moved from Beijing to a village to do NGO work. He really admires his new neighbors’ knowledge and sought out people to teach him wood working and traditional Chinese medicine techniques. In Houjia Village, the site of RCEF’s summer volunteer program his year, there are lots of talented people who could be volunteers’ teachers. My landlord is a skilled seamstress and a member of the village drum troupe. She agreed to teach summer “elective” classes of rug-making and drumming to interested volunteers. The rugs are so fun to make! It’s a group effort–four people work together. Anybody interested in signing up?