To leave right now from Fremont High School, take a taxi to the San Jose Airport, fly to Mumbai, India, stay in a 3-star hotel for one night, then take another taxi to a slum tour in Dharavi, it would cost a grand total of $1,120. For well-off Americans living in the Silicon Valley, this is a fairly low price to pay, but for the citizens of the Dharavi slum, $1,120 is a minimum of 56% of their yearly income, spent frivolously by a random tourist to see their lives. Every day, tour companies take hundreds of tourists into slums so that they can experience the daily life of a slum dweller. Slums, known in Africa as shanty-towns or townships and in South America as favelas, are, according to UN-Habitat are “groups of people living in urban areas…show more content… The hotspots of slum tourism are Dharavi, India, Rocinha, Brazil, and Kibera, Kenya (Engelhart). Dharavi rose to popularity because of the movie Slumdog Millionaire, in which the main character grows up in Dharavi (Sugden). It is also the largest slum in Asia, containing about one million people within 0.78 square miles (Melik). Rocinha and Kibera are also the largest slums in South America and Kenya, respectively. Even though these are the slums that get the most tourism, there are various smaller slums in places like Uganda (Engelhart), the Philippines, Nairobi, and the Dominican Republic. There have even been cases of poverty tourism in the US, in places like the Bronx, and New Orleans after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina…show more content… Advocates for slum tourism often describe how it can “contribute to a change in the representation of the slums and its people and that slum tourism is a legitimate way to fight poverty” (Tourism Concern). Despite all this, inhabitants of slums do not feel helped in any way, in fact, they feel quite the opposite. A trader in Dharavi explained that, “sometimes [the tourists] come to talk to [the locals], some offer [them] a bit of cash, but [they] don’t get anything from these tours” (Melik). In addition, the presence of tourists does not fight poverty in and of itself; unless the tour company is making significant donations to the community or the tourists take action after their visit, not much changes as a result of the tour. Furthermore, the complexity of slum poverty is far too much for the average tourist to solve. Although the tour may persuade them to try to help, the number of tourists who are visiting solely for entertainment far outnumber those who truly want to help
