Featured Project: AJA San Diego Project

In San Diego, The AjA Project runs Journey, an after school participatory photography program for refugee youth.

Journey operates in El Cajon and the City Heights area of San Diego, with young people who have been resettled here from Somalia, Sudan, Colombia, Southeast Asia, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Each semester approximately 50 kids participate in the Journey program. They learn how to use cameras, video cameras, computers and other multimedia tools, and are given opportunities to practice their written and oral English through writing assignments and public speaking opportunities.

Classes consist of interactive projects and discussions, photo and writing assignments, and field trips that engage refugee youth in critical thinking and self and community exploration. The students learn how to analyze their surroundings through the lens of a camera, create a photography-based story combining their words and images, and develop their computer skills. Through AjA, refugee youth are given the tools not only to express their experiences to a larger audience, but to process, reflect, and begin to understand their experiences of war, resettlement, immigration and assimilation.

In addition, AjA is committed to helping create communities where refugees are understood by others. Through exhibitions held around San Diego, we work to provide opportunities for our students to have their stories publicly shared and honored, and to foster dialogue among different sectors of our community (click here to view the students’ works).

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQG2TEAkggo&eurl=http://www.ajaproject.org/sandiegoproject.html

To contact AjA, please click here.

Welcome To The Institute

Thanks to disposable cameras, digitalization, and the Internet, a social phenomenon is emerging in countless communities and countries that we think deserves to be celebrated, replicated, studied, and identified. It includes the use of still photography, full motion photography, and sound. But as a collective movement, we call it Photographic Empowerment.

The Institute for Photographic Empowerment (IPE) combines the resources, energies and contacts of two important institutions: Venice Arts and the USC Annenberg School for Communication. Venice Arts has compiled a remarkable record in the United States and the world – from helping the homeless to document their lives to giving voice to women in Africa who are living with HIV/AIDS.

At USC Annenberg, scholars are studying the impact of these images on communities and individuals. We also have an intense interest in the ability of still and full motion photography to contribute to pubic diplomacy and to make it possible for people to gain leadership roles in their own communities. But while we have worked together to launch this Institute, we are looking forward to working with other groups and individuals around the world who are pioneering this field in even better and more innovative ways.

The Institute will serve as a virtual meeting place for groups and individuals who share our interest in learning from one another, creating best practices, exploring ethical and legal issues, and learning from the research of social scientists. We hope that this website will help to start that process and we invite all who are interested to come, comment, and collaborate.

Geoffrey Cowan
University Professor and Director,
USC Annenberg Center on Communication Leadership