Hello poor folks, jom selfie?
It is time the do-gooders among us realise it is important to treat the poor and underprivileged with dignity.
A couple of months ago, when I was in Yangon, I joined a group of young producers working on a documentary – it was about a family living at a dumpsite.
For days, we scheduled interviews and observed the family up close. We tracked the father and his eleven-year-old son walking around the dumpsite to collect recyclable bottles. We witnessed his other two younger children beg by the street for money from tourists and strangers. We followed them into the tiny hut they called home, made of bamboo and leaves. And we noted their lifestyle inside the hut, the food they ate and the clothes they wore.
Finally, after weeks of planning and preparation, we picked a day for shooting. Upon arrival, we set our cameras and that was when the crew realised something odd. We found the family members dressed in clean, un-torn clothes. Instead of the plain rice they ate almost every day, they were having vegetables and egg instead. The surroundings of their home looked cleaner and well-polished. Even the younger children gave begging a miss that day.
Disappointed, we asked them why they chose to distort the reality by putting up a fake front. They replied, “Being poor is embarrassing. But showing people how poor we are, a lot more.”
Like the folks I met in Yangon, I am sure there are lots more around the globe who are embarrassed at being poor.
Sadly, it is the privileged among us who publish the misfortune of the poor and underprivileged.
Take my friend for instance. Last week, he posted a series of pictures of himself driving around town with some 200 food containers in the trunk of his car. At every stop he made, he snapped pictures of the poverty-stricken folks who received his charity, and on some occasions, he even took selfies with them.
Like my friend, many others do the same and post their pictures on social media. Pictures of people receiving donations, food, clothes, books. Pictures of people sleeping by the roadside. Pictures of people queuing up for a hot meal. Pictures, pictures and more pictures!
I hate to sound like an old nagging makcik, but I can’t help but notice that more and more people in our society are self-centred. Rather than an act of compassion, I feel it is more an act of exploitation when they, and not the needy become the focus.
“Hello world, look at me! I am helping this poor guy.”
A friend whom I confronted for posting pictures of himself handing out food to the needy had this to say: “I am merely trying to help the needy. And by those pictures, I hope others will start doing it too. I think we should do whatever it takes to help them.”
Since visuals speak louder than words, how about posting a picture of the actual food you intended to distribute to the needy? Or a screenshot of the receipt of a donation you made? Why splash the faces of the needy all over social media? Can you not see how insensitive and profoundly sad this very act is?
How would you like pictures of yourself, at the lowest point of your life, uploaded onto the worldwide web for everyone to gawk at?
Connecting with the poor and underprivileged and carrying out acts of charity can leave us feeling good about ourselves. However, we should not do this at the expense of the dignity of the underprivileged. That is downright wrong.
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Sometimes doing good can have a nasty dimension to it. It is up to us to use our best judgement before we click the camera again.