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.
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.
“The 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.”
10 Comments
chiliedogg@lemmy.world · 30 pts · 1y
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.
pelespirit@sh.itjust.works · 12 pts · 1y
There's a whole lot of empathy that could be learned in the US too, we aren't as open to converting though.
bleistift2@sopuli.xyz · 12 pts · 1y
From what I’ve heard that empathy lasts about a week before the day-to-day in your home country lets you forget the third world.
FerretyFever0@fedia.io · 6 pts · 1y
Oh, absolutely. I doubt any of them really keep contact with the people they "helped".
chiliedogg@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 1y
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."
FerretyFever0@fedia.io · 2 pts · 1y
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.
chiliedogg@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 1y
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.
FundMECFSResearch@lemmy.cafe · 11 pts · 1y
Leviticus 19:34
If only they actually took the bible seriously.
Harvey656@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 1y
No god please don't try to get then to spread their religion. It always ends in genocide. :(
sartalon@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 1y
Frederick Douglass called it American Christianity.
He was soo fucking right.