How is this different to a micro loan?
The difference is that a micro loan enables people to create a business, engage with a micro economy and sell products or services on an ongoing basis. It’s empowering not because it’s an economic injection or immediate opportunity to earn, but because it stimulates their interaction with an economy through creating businesses with longevity.
This is using a homeless person as an unskilled sales force, giving them a one off access to income and not enabling them to establish an ongoing economic relationship with their consumers. Alienation from the economy and community is a truer definition of poverty than just being poor, and this does nothing to remedy that.
Another core issue is the use of the term “Homeless Hotspots” - if they’re really about doing good and empowerment, how about you leave the heavily stigmatised Homeless tag out of it so they’re not immediately weighted down by the prevalent social stigma which regarding the homeless? This would un-doubtingly help, rather than hinder the individuals trying to sell this wifi?
I think it’s fine. No-one is forcing them to do it, and they’re undoubtedly better off doing it than not from a financial standpoint… but I don’t think it’s empowering, and shouldn’t be positioned as purely altruistic, as there is undoubtedly a net benefit for the company who has created it and the controversy they have generated.
I think the outrage over BBH’s SXSW Homeless hotspots is misguided.
How is the idea of enabling people with no capital, no jobs to provide for themselves so horrible?
How is this different from microloans giving villagers in Bangladesh mobile phones that they can turn into a business…
