Past the Poverty Poster Child
When someone mentions global poverty, a series of images springs to most people’s minds. Pictures of homelessness, hunger and hardship. A young girl with sad eyes and dirty, worn clothes hanging from her stick-thin frame. An African boy begging for food to take back to his family in their home hand-built from mud. The poster children of poverty.
While these connotations may seem naturally occurring, like all perceptions of the world they had to be learnt somewhere. Many of these ideas have been instilled by aid adverts – think of all the charities you’ve seen asking for donations on TV, particularly around Christmas time when people are feeling more sentimental and in the giving spirit. They feature shocking images of families in extreme poverty lacking clean water, food and sufficient healthcare. These adverts don’t magically appear on your screens. They are carefully crafted to elicit sympathy from viewers and encourage people to make generous donations to their cause. This method of using graphic imagery to produce a strong emotional reaction is sometimes called ‘poverty porn’ and, as it is financially motivated, may not be a realistic representation of poverty around the world. So, with that in mind, let’s peel away the preconceptions and find out what it really means to be amongst the world’s poorest communities and which countries are struggling the most economically.
According to the Poverty and Inequality Platform, 826 million people currently live on less than $3 per day. If you are used to seeing the kind of charity campaigns I mentioned earlier, then you probably read that number and assumed the majority of those people live in Africa. While some Northern African countries like Algeria, Libya and Morocco have a middle-income and lower poverty rates, it is true that Sub-Saharan Africa makes up most of the world’s poverty cases, after which come Asian countries such as Nepal, India, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Based on what I saw in Delhi, I usually imagine poverty to exist on the streets of over-populated capital cities, but most people experiencing extreme poverty actually live in rural areas – 77.4% in 2022.
However, global statistics vary depending on how you measure poverty. It could be compared on an international level using countries’ GDP per capita as in the rankings above, or on a more local, personal level by measuring the gap between someone’s income and the cost of living in their country, as well as many other measurement methods which you can read about here. The World Bank uses surveys to gather information about families’ earnings and expenses. They attempt to keep this number as representative as possible so that it is still accurate when scaled up and compared to the rest of the world. However, relying on survey participation may mean that certain harder-to-reach, rural communities are excluded from the data.
Furthermore, there are many different types of poverty to be measured. The main one focused on by global statistics is absolute poverty, when people lack the essentials of housing, food, water and healthcare. This is the type that is more concentrated in Sub-Saharan Africa and parts of Asia. However, it is not only people in these regions that can be affected by poverty. Relative poverty compares people’s financial circumstances to the average for their area, community or country. High-income regions are still home to plenty of people in positions of hardship that need support, even if they have more income or material things than people in other parts of the world. Living in extreme poverty does not necessarily mean homelessness or unemployment. You can have some of life’s necessities but still not be able to afford things like electricity, healthcare or sanitary products. You can read about further types of poverty here.
Considering all this variation and the complexity of people’s situations, we should refrain from making reductionistic, broad assumptions about which countries experience the most poverty. Just because you see African poverty represented most in the media, does not mean it is the only region that needs economic aid. Overall, studies are finding that while the world is becoming wealthier, it is doing so unevenly, therefore widening economic disparity. With all this data on our minds, let’s turn to solutions. What can we do to help close this wealth gap and support communities living in hardship that are forgotten about by Western media?
Photos by Marwan Ahmed (https://unsplash.com/@marwan15), Hermes Rivera (https://unsplash.com/@hermez777) and Dulana Kodithuwakku (https://unsplash.com/@dulana_hansisi)
Everywhere I looked while I was in India there were beggars, including small children, on the streets. The overwhelming number of people asking us for spare change became harder and harder to ignore. As much as I wanted to relieve their suffering, I knew that my small, one-off contribution would not have much of a long-term impact on India’s economy and living conditions. There was an obvious racial factor that caused so many people to follow us through the streets begging. Our whiteness indicated wealth and therefore a responsibility and willingness to give back to those in need. In addition to the stereotypical idea of African poverty most people hold, we also imagine the ‘heroes’ of this story to be rich white people selflessly swooping in and throwing money at less fortunate communities, building houses and schools, but not before taking plenty of photos with the village children. It is a narrative once again sold to us by the media. Perhaps perpetuating white saviourism leads to some kind of ego complex that boosts the amount white Western audiences are willing to donate to a cause, which is good if it has a large positive impact on poverty, but are white people really contributing the most to communities in need?
The World Giving Report shows that in 2025 it was African citizens who donated the highest percentage of their income to charitable causes. Believe it or not, Europeans donated the lowest percentage of their income – only 0.6%! Religious giving and personal connections to global issues are just two of the factors at play in this data, but what I think it proves is that people of colour do not get the credit they deserve for contributing to global development and trying to improve issues like poverty. It is only logical that people living closer to the problem would be the ones to help local communities, while Westerners simply send money abroad to help fund these projects. People are often hesitant to make large donations as they cannot see for themselves what their money is being spent on. Instead, many choose to personally visit and contribute to the efforts themselves.
While volunteering abroad can have a genuine impact and speed up organisations’ projects such as building infrastructure or providing education, it can also inadvertently worsen some of the problems. Often volunteers are young, unskilled individuals who can’t afford to make a large donation so prefer to contribute their labour. Again, this is a nice thought, but while a Westerner is building houses in an African village for free, there are locals who could benefit more from learning these skills or better yet could be paid for their labour if the organisation raised enough money for wages on top of materials. Similarly to my post about ethical animal tourism and conservation projects abroad, when doing any kind of international volunteering you must always consider whether the project you want to take part in is actually beneficial for locals or whether it prioritises your experience as a volunteer and profits from tourism instead of reinvesting in communities. What people in poverty need is education, skills, access to employment… not someone to fly in, do the job for them and then leave them in almost the same economic position they were in before. If we don’t provide opportunities for people to better themselves financially, how can we expect economic injustice to change?
You surely know the proverb ‘give a man a fish, you feed him for a day but teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime’. This philosophy is a large part of why I am so passionate about global education. While absolute poverty is still a huge global justice issue, I am particularly concerned about opportunity poverty. We often believe it is an individual’s own fault that they are poor. That if they worked harder, budgeted better and made different life choices they would not be in their situation. The reality for most people in poverty is that their choices were limited from the start. Only being able to attend school for a few years, being too hungry to concentrate in class, being married off or used as cheap labour at a young age all seriously restrict a child’s future. A common misconception is that poor countries are trapped in cyclical poverty and their situation will only worsen over time. This pessimism leads to many people who have the power to help abandoning their efforts, seeing aid as a waste of money, but the way to stop generational poverty is by intercepting the cycle, and that starts with children. Every generation we let slip away without improved opportunities is another one we let be consumed by the same poverty that affected their parents.
There is a concept called ‘the Girl Effect’ which suggests that girls are a key part of the solution to poverty. As they usually receive the least education and many remain unemployed their whole lives, contributing the least to the economy, it is argued that training girls and giving them access to the workplace instead of arranging early marriages for them could have an enormous effect on a country’s financial circumstances, saving up to $30 trillion dollars apparently! It’s 2026, let’s not allow continuing gender stereotypes to prevent a whole country’s opportunities for development.
However, educating girls is not the only way to reduce extreme poverty. Boys also need skills that will lead them to secure careers working for employers who care about their rights and wellbeing. In 2024, almost 8% of the world’s children were working, 54 million of which were putting their health at risk by doing so. While Western culture often values careers in finance, law or medicine over manual labour, it is key to focus on teaching the skills that poor communities are lacking. UNICEF’s programmes prioritise vocational training as well as educating youths about technology, entrepreneurship and transferable communicative skills that could help them succeed in a whole range of careers. All around the world young people are being taught things like how to write a CV, give a presentation, make smart financial decisions and get involved in politics. If we want youths raised in extreme poverty to have a chance of competing with other students and early career professionals, it is crucial that they also gain these competencies.
While many believe educating youth is central to improving global poverty and injustice, older generations should certainly not be excluded from these efforts. It is never too late to learn new skills and contribute to your community. Subjects like hygiene and nutrition are important for people of all ages and improving knowledge of these can significantly reduce the cost of healthcare later down the line. Everyone deserves to know how to keep themselves clean and protected from infections or malnutrition. You can visit Concern Worldwide’s website for more poverty solutions that have a real impact.
For now, what can you do to help from the comfort of your home? If you’re reading this then you’re part of the 74% of the world who have access to the internet, which means you have a never-ending supply of information at your fingertips. This post only gives you an overview of the data and solutions to global poverty. Go and research what different charities are doing to reach struggling communities and find out what you can do to get involved, but remember to verify the ethics of these charities before you accidentally steal an opportunity from someone who needs it more. If you are able to, consider donating directly instead of going through an organisation taking a cut. Volunteering can make a difference, but ultimately, running projects and buying materials have to be funded somehow. If you choose to volunteer instead of donating, you do not have to pay thousands to use a company. You can simply fly out and ask what needs doing. Teach free classes over Zoom, send sanitary products to women who can’t afford them, share whatever skills and knowledge you have that could help the next generation escape poverty.
Thank you for reading this data-dense entry! Please like and share so that more people can change their misconceptions and make a real difference to those living in extreme poverty.
Until next time,
The Torn Traveller