A Royal Caribbean cruise ship docked in Labadie. Photo: Rob Inh00d (flickr)

It's not an uncommon theme in the Caribbean: Beyond the most beautiful shorelines exists some of the most extreme poverty in the world.

The poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, Haiti boasts an exclusive beach resort in the northwest coastal town Labadie. The Haitian Government sold the land to cruise giant Royal Caribbean years ago to boost tourism, but PRI's The World reports that the fishing village remains poor despite the flock of tourists who come ashore twice a week.

Labadie's 5,000 residents reap little benefit from the cruise ships — one of which is ironically called "Freedom of the Seas" — that dock in their town. Tourists rarely venture past the private beaches and only a handful of locals work for Royal Caribbean. A few years ago, the community developed its own non-profit to deliver the services it needs. Their organization, Vwa Ayiti (Voice of Haiti), built composting toilets that turn waste into fertilizer. Community members are developing a water treatment system, and are partnering with Canadian NGOs to set up a Haitian-run medical clinic in a neighboring village.

Tourists have little idea what life is like in Labadie, preferring to stay close to the pristine shoreline, free from signs of a difficult life. “I don’t want to see poverty,” an American woman told The New York Times. “I’m on vacation. I don’t want to think that these people don’t have enough to eat.”

Vwa Ayiti's efforts can't take on all of the community's problems, but according to The World, the organization has strengthened the identity of Labadie's residents. An elder in the community shared his view on the program: "In Labadie, life depends on God's help and on your neighbors and friends. Without them, you can't survive here."

Eating on a dollar a day. For two eager Californians, it was an experiment. But for nearly a billion people in the developing world, it’s a daily reality.

The one-dollar diet project started as an attempt to cut grocery costs, say Kerri Leonard and Christopher Greenslate. The couple also wanted to get their friends and family thinking about world hunger issues. The World Bank estimates that 969 million people in the world get by on less than $1 a day.

To feed themselves for a month, Leonard and Greenslate bought rice and beans in bulk and made everything from scratch. Eating less meant eating less healthier — most of the time, they couldn’t afford fresh produce.

The project stirred a healthy conversation on the couple’s blog, ranging from supportive culinary tips to criticism that the two were eating — but not living — in true poverty. Poor people who can’t afford food also struggle, for example, to get fuel for cooking, Dartmouth professor Susanne Friedberg told the Christian Science Monitor. And how far a dollar reaches depends entirely on one’s environment.

“If you live on a dollar a day and you have land and enough hands to work it and the rains are good, the dollar is irrelevant,” Friedberg said. “If you live in a city and depend on the market for food, then you are really suffering.”