Poverty tourism is a fascinating industry.
It really can teach empathy to young people, but it's also an extremely inefficient use of resources. People will spend 3 grand to travel across the world to provide aid worth about a hundred bucks.
this post was submitted on 12 Aug 2025
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From what Iβve heard that empathy lasts about a week before the day-to-day in your home country lets you forget the third world.
Oh, absolutely. I doubt any of them really keep contact with the people they "helped".
They don't keep in contact with the people, but it can help them empathize with people they don't know and change their outlook on "foreigners."
I mean, I guess. But it's pretty easy to forget about other people when you aren't really reminded of them, especially when you never really knew them that well.
I can't speak for everyone, but when I went to Bolivia with a medical team in 2000 as a high-schooler my life was changed. I don't keep in contact with anyone from those days, but the experience made me a better, more empathetic person, and I better recognize my privilege as an American.
Am I perfect? No. But it still gave me a different perspective on the world than my experiences in the marching band as a middle-class white Texan kid. I went into it brainwashed as a hard-core Republican. That didn't change in my few weeks in Bolivia, but the impressions it left on me were a large part of how I came to re-evaluate my social, spiritual, and political beliefs in college.
There's a whole lot of empathy that could be learned in the US too, we aren't as open to converting though.
βThe foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the LORD your God.βΒ
Leviticus 19:34
If only they actually took the bible seriously.
Frederick Douglass called it American Christianity.
He was soo fucking right.
No god please don't try to get then to spread their religion. It always ends in genocide. :(