Organised by the Compassion Experience UK, a charitable organisation with a focus on child development and advocacy, the tour will provide
sights, sounds and smells of a developing country and include true stories of selected children from selected countries.
Between April to July 2019, a 70-foot mobile trailer will tour selected towns in the UK to help the “more privileged society and its people” have a literal feel of what it is like to live in poverty or under the poverty line in developing countries.
Although said to be a tour centred around developing countries, the tour conspicuously focuses on African countries highlighting life in Ethiopia and Uganda.
According to an article by Birmingham Updates, the tour gives visitors an insight into what life is like for some of the most vulnerable children in the world using interactive, tactile, audio and visual stories of Sameson, a boy from Ethiopia, and Shamim, a girl from Uganda.
The free and family-friendly event is opened to both adults and children but primarily aimed at showing children in the UK an immersive poverty experience without the need to travel. Speaking on the project, Justin Dowds, CEO of Compassion UK explained that The Compassion Experience aims at ‘bringing the developing world to our doorsteps’.
Through the ‘experience’, the organisation which has been in existence for 60 years hopes to raise funds to run projects in the many developing countries they work in.
The announcement of the project has since April 17 caused a stir on social media. Following negative comments about the tour, Compassion Experience UK has since released a How the Compassion Experience challenges stereotypes about poverty statement defending their project and explaining that the media might have interpreted wrongly.
However, several people are still against the project describing it as insulting and discriminatory. Here are some views shared on social media.
You do not have to bring #Ugandans and #Ethiopians to #Birmingham to show people what poverty is or give them chance to experience it. We think this is insensitive and condescending and an inhumane way of raising funds, which will even not reach #Uganda and #Ethiopia.not funny!
— Kalcz (@Kalcz) April 21, 2019
This may appear interesting to (whom?) a Western audience,but could also be taken as a risky business, that may reporduce, commodify, stereotype and naturalize the vulnerability and poverty of the “South” as an aspect of global governmentality by the “North” #Ethiopia #Birmingham
— ዘርይሁን (@Zerihun_et) April 19, 2019
This may appear interesting to (whom?) a Western audience,but could also be taken as a risky business, that may reporduce, commodify, stereotype and naturalize the vulnerability and poverty of the “South” as an aspect of global governmentality by the “North” #Ethiopia #Birmingham
— ዘርይሁን (@Zerihun_et) April 19, 2019
The height of Poverty porn, but, with your own private booth for your messianic voyeuristic pleasure. Oh don’t forget to add Kevin Carter’s Vulture and Child pix for effect. Oloshi. pic.twitter.com/AV9J9JvoMn
— Alkasim Abdulkadir (@alkayy) April 19, 2019
Bwahahaaaaa beautiful put. How the west thinks poverty is only in AFRICA. yet the streets of Birmingham is littered with poor people…
— Wabinyai Fidel ?? (@WabiRaja) April 20, 2019
