Third World first: Latest American theme park brings home reality of life in the slums

THEY have been dedicated to Hollywood studios, space exploration and the future of mankind but never the poorest communities on earth. Until now.

An American charity has launched the world’s first slum theme park, complete with around 30 ramshackle hovels, a communal outdoor toilet and door-to-door detritus.

The bizarre tourist attraction, built on six-and-a-half acres in the southern American state of Georgia, is the work of the Christian charity Habitat for Humanity. It hopes the slum theme park will attract up to 70,000 visitors a year. Their donations will be used to provide decent housing for the some of the 1.2 billion people who live in poverty in the developing world.

The Global Village and Discovery Centre, which was opened last month by the former American president Jimmy Carter, is designed to resemble a generic squatter settlement, as might be found in Mumbai or Nairobi.

The site comes complete with the requisite plastic sheeting, broken glass, tables made from crates, dirty mattresses and broken bicycles. An employee said that groundsmen sometimes light an occasional barrel fire for atmosphere.

As they leave the theme park visitors are shown the decent housing that can be built for as little as 1,700 in poverty-stricken communities around the world.

Barbara Webber, Habitat for Humanity’s spokeswoman, said: "If we can get people to think of the needs of people who live in poverty housing, then we are accomplishing part of our goals, which is to raise awareness."

Linda Mills, who coordinates tours of the faux slum settlement, added: "This can bring us down to earth about what we have, compared with the rest of the world." She added that one wealthy middle-aged visitor had been so moved by his visit to the village that he had pledged to pay for a Habitat house each year for the rest of his life.

Anita Snell, 62, who works with poor communities in Asia for the Co-operative Baptist Fellowship, appeared less impressed as she took the tour.

"You need a polluted ditch running through," she said, adding: "I was wondering if you want to add smells to make it more realistic."

However, Dick Koegeman, the centre’s executive director, pointed out that the creators of the pretend slum village had to draw the line somewhere.

"We had to make sure it didn’t look too nice, but it also had to be safe. At a certain point we had to stop making it too realistic. We can’t have stagnant water and naked children hanging around."

Nevertheless, Lynne Griever, coordinator of the Georgia Task Force for the Homeless, said prospective visitors to Habitat for Humanity’s theme park might do better looking at the real thing in their own back yard. "I’m not criticising their building of the park but we all miss the point that we have this poverty here at home," she said.

Habitat for Humanity has said it intends to add a dilapidated trailer to the village as an example of poverty housing in the United States. Commenting on the creation of the park - which has been built on donated land next to the organisation’s headquarters in Americus at a cost of $1.3m (800,000) - Millard Fuller, the president and founder of Habitat for Humanity, said one of the biggest challenges had been that construction firms kept making the area too attractive.

"We’d say, ‘You’re making it too nice, look at the photo again.’"