Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by homebrewer 4 hours ago
I've long wished for rich western societies to run extensive student exchange programs with low income countries. Living even one year in most of the world will change your outlook for the rest of your life.
3 comments

Usually the people in low income/developing countries that engage in student exchange programs are upper middle class and beyond and have lives no much different from their peers in developed western societies.

People in western societies tend to ignore that developing countries are not merelly poorer but also generally marked by extreme wealth and income inequality. The rich and the upper middle class for all practical effects live like the citizens of developed countries, it is just that there are less of them compared to the general population.

My university offers locations such as India for the semester abroad, but most people rather go somewhere else.
There's a video somewhere in this Library of Babel of some Palestinian kids who got a chance to visit New York (when Palestinian kids were still allowed to enter the USA, leave their occupied nation, and not be genocided to death).

Obviously they looked at all the skyscrapers with bewilderement.