This past summer, I was gearing up to start graduate school at the MIT Sloan School of Management. Poverty, Inc. had played in 30 film festivals and numerous top universities, secured distribution, and been endorsed across the political spectrum from libertarians to Michael Moore. After 5 years working on this and related projects, I felt a strong temptation to put it up on the trophy shelf, list it on my resume, and move on. But I couldn't shake the feeling that the real work was just beginning. I wrote in my journal one day: "You don't make documentaries to win awards. You make them to change culture." That's when I decided to defer MIT and spend the year touring with the film, engaging people around the country and internationally on these ideas.
I traveled for 50 days straight living out of a big white van I borrowed from a buddy and doing a screening / Q&A pretty much every night of each week. I covered 7,570 miles by road and 10,042 by air in those 50 days alone. I was blown away by the passion and energy of screening organizers and participants in the dozens and dozens of cities I visited, with lengthy post-screening discussions ranging 30-75 minutes following the 91 minute film.
Thank you to all you community leaders who organized screenings, all you generous hosts who put me up in your homes, and all you bright thinkers who shared your insights with me.
As 2016 approaches, I invite you to consider organizing more screenings of Poverty, Inc. in your city, for your organization, or at your university this coming winter and spring. This is how we drive change; one conversation at a time.
To organize a screening, visit our screenings page or email screenings@povertyinc.org. Thanks so much. I hope for a chance to meet you for a screening in 2016.
A wave of change is rising. Step up as a screening organizer to help catalyze a cultural paradigm shift in the way we practice charity and development. Visit www.povertyinc.org/organize or email screenings@povertyinc.org to get started. POVERTY, INC. is a 91 minute documentary film that has earned over 40 international film festival honors including a "Best of Fests" selection to IDFA Amsterdam - the biggest documentary festival in the world. Film Synopsis: "I see multiple colonial governors," says Ghanaian software entrepreneur Herman Chinery-Hesse of the international development establishment in Africa. “We are held captive by the donor community.” The West has positioned itself as the protagonist of development, giving rise to a vast multi-billion dollar poverty industry — the business of doing good has never been better. Yet the results have been mixed, in some cases even catastrophic, and leaders in the developing world are growing increasingly vocal in calling for change. Drawing from over 200 interviews filmed in 20 countries, Poverty, Inc. unearths an uncomfortable side of charity we can no longer ignore. From TOMs Shoes to international adoptions, from solar panels to U.S. agricultural subsidies, the film challenges each of us to ask the tough question: Could I be part of the problem?