Wednesday, March 12, 2008

"Development Tourism"

Ouch!

Mary sent me this post on a third-party's blog, for discussion purposes only. She added this comment on the post:

He [the blogger] doesn't factor in the value that the experience has on the short term tourists, in terms of their education or their future impact. But if it's about the tourist, then, and not what they'll give, then they should change their ideas from the start.

John Barry is a fellow teacher here this year--he's on a furlough year from his ministry in Lesotho (yes, furlough working at RVA; he's from Zimbabwe, so I guess you don't want to be going back there these days. :) Anyway, he's great, as is his family, and he mentioned that he would love to see "short termers" come with an agenda to witness and pray--that, he says, is valuable work that can be reasonably accomplished in a short time.


UPDATE: The third-party who posted the negative comments on "development tourism" somewhat moderated his views, and Mary brought that to our attention in her comment. Here is the blogger's "revisit" to the subject.

1 comment:

mary said...

Read the good follow-up post here: http://chrisblattman.blogspot.com/2008/03/development-tourism-revisited.html