I watched the hour long documentary, “Poverty, Inc.” by Michael Matheson-Miller and I loved it. It gave really good insights on poverty, and the impacts it has had on the community. It goes into detail about how NGOs, international aids, and developmental programs have not been helping poverty like they think they have. This documentary critiques these systems, and reveals what isn’t being done to alleviate the crisis. This paper is going to go into the main ideas of this documentary, analyze some main problems of poverty, and look into local solutions for it.
The first point this documentary makes is about how societies are too dependent on international and foreign aid organizations. It argues that large-scale organizations, specifically international NGOs, have a dependency culture in nations that tend to have more impoverished people and are still developing. This dependency on these aid organizations tend to discourage self-sufficiency and innovation within societies. It’s important that poverty is continuously encouraged to not be complacent in their circumstances, but to keep finding ways to make their lives better. One example of this that they used in the documentary was NGOs in Africa. They highlighted how aid-driven programs there provide free products and services all the time to people that are highly in need. While this is a great way to help and provide for the community in a short-term way, ultimately they prevent these people from self-providing. In other words, the people that are in poverty get complacent and comfortable with where they are at because they are being provided goods and services. So some of them might think why would they even need to work to self-sustain themselves when they already have a free aid program that provides for them. Another way that the documentary points out that government aid can have a negative impact on societies in need is *by not realizing that by providing free goods, there can become an influx and local businesses and farmers can’t compete with the low prices of these imported goods. This can destroy economies. *The example that the documentary talked about that reflected this idea was Haiti’s earthquake in 2010 and the rice imports. After this massive earthquake hit the country, aid was provided to Haitians in the form of free rice for food. Since the rice was being imported by the U.S. this influx caused a lowering of prices in the imported rice to Haiti. This ultimately hurt local farmers really badly because they couldn’t compete with those prices and the local rice industry collapsed. This example reveals the long-term dependency that can come with this aid and the difficulty of being able to sustain local economies. From an ethical standpoint, it is a hard concept because if economies are in need, the first thing you think of that would help is to provide for them. That is ethically the right decision, but in the long term, we really have to ask the question of if we are looking out for these societies and are we really helping them? How can we ethically provide for societies in need without making them complacent in their circumstances?
The second main point that was advocated for in this documentary is the importance and role that entrepreneurs play in impoverished societies. This goes along with getting rid/not relying too much on external aid, and instead encouraging entrepreneurship within local societies and local businesses facing poverty head-on. I believe that entrepreneurship is important because real reform and change happens when individuals and communities can be empowered to create and innovate their own solutions to problems. This encourages collaboration and development between people that can foster really impactful solutions. People can almost feel more empowered to change and make a difference whenever they aren’t just handed free, temporary solutions. An example that the documentary highlighted was an ecovillage in India. A local entrepreneur created a sustainable farming initiative that incorporated eco-friendly practices for the country. This initiative led to the increase in local jobs, an empowered community, and sustainable agriculture. *This is super important because not only did this initiative support impoverished people by providing local jobs for them, the entrepreneur was also able to cater to the communities’ needs. *This overall builds a more sustainable community and local entrepreneurs can easily create and innovate based on what their community really needs.
Overall, this documentary was super insightful and I learned a lot about impoverished nations around the world. I really liked and agreed with the main points that were being presented. I think we could even circle back to the idea of Universal Basic Income and how that would impact impoverished nations. How effective would these be, what kind of opportunities would arise, and what kind of problem could it bring? Another solution could be education, and what kind of educational reform can be most impactful? These are both potential solutions, but also ways to analyze the different solutions of poverty and what would be best for that specific community.
