Posing for ‘poverty porn’: The murky ethics of NGO fundraising ‘hero shots’
The young girl in Sunrise Cambodia’s recent fundraising campaign has been labelled a “sex worker” in glossy typeface. Her face is smeared with dirt. She is accompanied by a “trafficked kid” and a “homeless teen” on the page. “Just because it raises money, it doesn’t make it right,” fellow Australian Leigh Mathews, of Re/Think Orphanages, said this week. On 25 May, her organisation delivered a letter of complaint to Sunrise’s board of directors, signed by 22 others.
