Is “poverty porn” making a comeback?

Or rather, did “poverty porn” ever go away?

Malaka Gharib in NPR’s Goats & Soda blog yesterday, asks “At What Point Does A Fundraising Ad Go Too Far?

Orphan

Are exploitative photos of the poor creeping back into nonprofit fundraising? It’s not a tactic IDEX will use, because, as I share in the article,

“If that person in a photo was your nephew, your child, your grandmother, would you want them to appear in that ad? If the answer is no, you’re over the line.”

As the blogosphere and Twitterverse has matured over the past decade, people–from the Global South and NGO workers alike–are calling out the hypocrisy of NGO communications and the inaccuracies of depicting people as helpless. They are rooting out stereotypes, generalizations, and exploitation, and more importantly, have started representing a fuller picture of people’s skills, commitment, and resilience in the Global South.

Read the full article here and follow the discussion on Twitter at #DevPix.

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