Why You Will Never See Starving Kids in Our Publications; Saying No To Poverty Porn

We are at a pivotal moment in world history: in the past 15 years technology – and specifically social media – has grown at an exponential rate. Never have we been so close to one another, so accessible; we are now truly a ‘global village’. However, among the OECD countries, we are still plagued with images of the global south which are inaccurate and disenfranchising. While we know that nearly 1.1 billion people have moved out of extreme poverty since 1990 and that in 2013, 767 million people lived on less than $1.90 a day, down from 1.85 billion in 1990, viewing poor people as one-dimensional characters is flat. In an attempt to change this situation, many organizations try to appeal to a donor’s sense of guilt. To quote Kelsey Timmerman (author of “Where Am I Wearing?: A Global Tour to the Countries, Factories, and People) “Too often we objectify people living in poverty. We paint them as two-dimensional characters that we pity”. While I understand this approach, it’s somewhat misguided and results in inadvertently objectifying the people they seek to serve. To further compound this issue, many organizations rely on volunteers who sometimes contribute to these stereotypes through sharing images which reinforce white savior stereotypes of their work on social media.

At BoP Innovation Center, we have a different approach. Firstly, we differ in the way we look and speak about the people with whom we work. You’ll often read that we refer to our target group – the “Bottom of the Pyramid” demographic as Clients, Consumers, Collaborators, and Customers. Language, as you know, is powerful and by using certain words, you can have a leveling of the power dynamic. For example, term ‘beneficiaries’ creates a dynamic whereby people are benefiting from your benevolence; it turns them into merely recipients with no agency in their future. A client (or customer), however, evokes a different feeling. A client has demands, desires and a clear view of what they want and need in their lives. The saying goes “the customer is always right” and thereby dictates how we serve our customer. ... in the 18 countries in which we carry out projects.  

For us, we see ourselves as catalysts, collaborators and facilitators for the BoP population. As we work alongside people in the 18 countries we work, we provide an array of services they find valuable while we also learn in the process; the exchange is one of dialogue, collaboration, and team spirit. And so, in our publications you will see that we honor this exchange and market evolution – from working with rural sales women to assist them in professionalizing their businesses to working with SMEs to help them expand their businesses – you will see what we see: the enormous potential, optimism, and innovation that people in the global south possess. For us as social entrepreneurs, we want to exalt this huge human resource and we feel lucky to work with such dynamic individuals. No, you won’t see starving kids in our publications; it’s not that malnutrition doesn’t exist but that the people with whom we work are full in so many other ways. We want to affirm that fact by helping them to build up their own capital, so they can negotiate their own way out of poverty on their own terms.