Not everyone uses Instagram for publishing photos of painted nails, animals decorated like Christmas trees or more or less funny parties with friends. Even if it’s mostly populated by people that use it just for fun, Instagram, sometimes, is successfull in the increasingly arduous challenge of making us think about what’s happening away from the safety of our homes, catching the eye for a good cause. Some months ago we casually ended up on the profile of Pachi Tamer (@cachafaz), an Argentinian creative director with a thick beard and a smiling face. In his free time he walks the streets of Austin, Texas – where he lives with his family -, Los Angeles, Medellìn and Mexico City, taking pictures of the homeless with his iPhone. His tecnique is simple and almost always winning: he approaches them, offers them a cigarette and lets them share their stories.
Like this, his 15K followers discovered the story of Jim, a German-descent homeless person, who has the dream of going at least once in his life to Oktoberfest. After approaching him, Pachi understood that his work could be used for a good cause: to raise money with the One Dollar Dream Project, as he named it, for making the homeless people’s dream come true. As the dream of Alexander, addicted to “basuco” – a drug produced from the waste of cocaine and used widely in the ghettos of South America –, who wanted to stop with the drug use. Nowadays he’s in rehab in Medellìn. Or the dream of Bob, who bought a bike with the money raised thanks to Paki’s project.
One of the lastest shared stories is the one of Jaret, that Pachi used for an experiment: he published a post in which he made followers believe that this young, astute-eyed homeless person took advantage of his confidence and stole his car. In the next post, Pachi unveiled the meaning of his experiment, answering to the people that accused poor Jaret of the act: “I lied to you guys. I’m sorry. Why did I do it? For two reasons. First of all, to those who thought you can’t trust people from the streets, I have to tell you that you’re wrong. Sometimes the people you know well are the ones that let you down. And second, never trust what people say about others. No matter how much you trust that person. Usually we get the wrong idea and judge others for something we hear from someone else”.
A lesson for everybody. And, if possible, a trip to knowing people and lives we would otherwise never know. A trip that may be better than any other trip we will ever do.
