Children of Our Villages (COV) Aims to Empower Youth

Children of Our Villages empowers young people to create prosperity and awareness through filmmaking and self-expression. A team of professional filmmakers and educators from the US and Namibia will spend 6 weeks at The Witvlei Orphanage, teaching the kids to write, produce, and act in their own film. Children of Our Villages will train and collaborate with members of the local community, forming Namibian Community Ambassadors. Through life-skills and self-expression workshops, the children will gain a stronger sense of identity, ownership, and the story they want to share with the world!

For more information, CLICK HERE.

Beyondmedia’s Girls! Action! Media!

Overwhelming evidence has shown that girls and young women need more information technology training in supportive environments. Research shows that parents, teachers and other adults typically expect girls not to perform as well as boys in all areas of technology, regardless of their true potential, demonstrated abilities or interest in learning. Our Girls! Action! Media! program brings on-site media empowerment workshops to girls and young women in community-based organizations. This workshop fosters leadership development and community activism while teaching skills that nurture artistic expression and critical thinking, and can lead participants to careers in media and technology. Each workshop series develops both media literacy and production skills, allowing girls to use media to explore their own lives and the world around them. Participants critically examine the role of media and representations of women, then determine and create their own video, website or other media project that explores issues relevant to their communities. The workshop culminates with a media event organized by participants where they can present the project to the public and facilitate discussions about their issues. This distribution and the international video distribution through Beyondmedia allows the young women to participate in a public dialogue in universities, organizations, community groups and film fests around the world. Girls! Action! Media! workshops engage all aspects of young women’s lives and provide a safe space to explore personal and social change.

For more information, visit Girls! Action! Media!

Courtesy of Beyondmedia

Shoot Nations

Shoot Nations is a joint partnership between Plan UK and Shoot Experience to encourage young people to express their thoughts on global issues through photography and drawings. Shoot Nations aims to use these art forms as tools of cross-cultural, language-free communication.

Shoot Nations is produced each year to coincide with the United Nations’ International Youth Day, annually commemorated on 12th August.

Click here to view Shoot Nations’ website.

Chinese Village Women as Visual Anthropologists: A Participatory Approach to Reaching Policymakers

In this article, authors Caroline Wang, Mary Ann Burris and Xiang Yue Ping (1996) study the unbelievable labor force of Chinese women in rural China.  Often unseen and unheard, researchers used a participant photography method to “(1) empower rural women to record and reflect their lives, especially health needs, from their own point of view; (2) to increase their collective knowledge about women’s health status; and (3) to inform policymakers and the broader society about health and community issues that are of greatest concern to rural women.”

Click here to view full article.

Social Science & Medicine 1996

Caroline Wang^a, Mary Ann Burris^b and Xiang Yue Ping^c

Representing HIV/AIDS in Africa: Pluralist Photography and Local Empowerment

This essay examines the political consequences of the portrayal of HIV/AIDS  in Africa.  Authors Ronald Bleiker and Amy Kay (2007), “examine how different methods of photography embody different ideologies through which we give meaning to political phenomena.”  Their findings suggest three different photographic methods of representing this health crisis in Africa.

Click here to view full article.

International Studies Quarterly 2007

ROLAND BLEIKER
University of Queensland

AMY KAY
United Nations Development Programme, Cairo

Opening: UNSEENAMERICA: Arab Women in Brooklyn

UNSEENAMERICA: Arab Women in Brooklyn, began as a 12 week photography workshop taught as part of UNSEENAMERICA, a nation-wide, community-based arts and social justice program. Run by Bread and Roses, a 29-year old organization dedicated to bringing cultural experiences to the disenfranchised, the program transforms ordinary people into artists with cameras, encouraging them to document and describe their worlds through photography and original texts.

Arab women now living in Brooklyn, recent immigrants from Yemen, Syria, Egypt, Morocco, and Jordan, participated in the workshop to learn to take photos of their lives. The class was held this past spring at the Arab American Family Support Center (AAFSC). During the course of the workshop, participants were loaned digital cameras and taught by photographer Shari Diamond, how to use them. They were given hands-on instruction and encouraged to turn their lenses on themselves and their lives. What emerges from their work is a powerful representation of their lives and communities.

UNSEENAMERICA: Arab Women in Brooklyn
A Project of Bread and Roses 1199SEIU

Wednesday, September 10th 2008
Opening Reception and Reading 6 - 8 pm
Heather Raffo, playwright and actress, will read from her play “Nine Parts of Desire.”

Read the entire press release by clicking here.

The House Is Small But the Welcome Is Big at Exit Art Gallery in NYC

Photographs by African Women and Children Affected by AIDS

EXIT UNDERGROUND GALLERY, NYC

September 20 - October 18, 2008

Over the past two years an unlikely group of amateur photographers has documented the life and death struggle of HIV/AIDS in Africa. Eighteen children from Maputo, Mozambique, orphaned by AIDS, and 15 HIV-positive women in Cape Town, South Africa, pointed cameras at images in their communities to tell the uncensored story of their lives.

The House Is Small is a project of Venice Arts, a nonprofit organization running innovate programs in documentary photography, filmmaking, and digital media/arts, primarily targeting low-income youth in the Los Angeles area since 1993. The organization also implements regional, national and international participant-produced photo documentary projects with adults and children.

More information coming soon or visit http://www.thehouseissmall.org/ .

Engaging Young Adolescents in Social Action Through Photovoice

The Journal of Early Adolescence

Nance Wilson

Public Health Institute, California, nwilson@phi.org

Stefan Dasho

Public Health Institute, California

Anna C. Martin

Public Health Institute, California

Nina Wallerstein

University of New Mexico

Caroline C. Wang

University of Michigan

Meredith Minkler

University of California at Berkeley

The Youth Empowerment Strategies Program (YES!) is an afterschool program designed to empower and educate underprivileged youth through participant photography research methods.  According to authors Nance Wilson, Stefan Dash, Anna C. Martin, Nina Wallerstein, Caroline C. Wang, Meredith Minker (2007), ” This article specifically focuses on the use of Photovoice as a promising way to engage youth in social change as they take photos capturing strengths and issues in their environment and use these as the basis of critical dialogue and collective action plans.”

Click here for full article.

ARE WE REALLY MAKING A DIFFERENCE? by Walter Bodle, Founder, Youth In Focus

Are youth photography programs really doing what their missions say they are doing? Are we really changing lives? Who is being empowered? What impact are they making - if any?

Those well developed stories coming from youth photography programs like Shooting Back, Youth in Focus, Photovision and Kids with Cameras continue to inspire others to start their own projects, with the hopes of making a difference in the lives of individuals, a neighborhood, a community or even larger parts of the world. Somewhere in the process of creating and sustaining these programs a few “sensitive” questions sneak into the room - often asked by potential financial supporters.

At this year’s annual meeting of Society for Photographic Education (SPE), Steven Rubin (Penn State) raised some searching questions about the “. . .means, motives, and modalities of community arts projects in photography.” My initial defensive curiosity wanted to see if this was just another “academic” posture from some ivy- covered tower. Not so. Rubin’s research found several programs making grandiose claims of “making a difference”; even by putting disposable cameras in the hands of children - for a day.

The questions he asked in his presentation were more important than the results of his research. Of the programs that typically describe their purpose as empowering and transforming the diverse and disadvantaged population, or offering life-changing opportunities to shape and control their own representations he asks: How effective are these efforts? Whom do they most benefit? How? To what consequence? To what degree are participants able to express and control their own experience?

These are the types of questions that we frequently ask ourselves at Youth in Focus in Seattle. Sometimes they are asked at board meetings, at program committee meetings and often during a site visit by a potential funder. Self-evaluation has been one of the key factors sustaining this program now finishing its fifteenth summer quarter.

In the fall of 1993, after reading about “Shooting Back,” we thought that a similar summer program in Seattle might distract a few inner-city kids away from the negative things in their lives toward more positive matters

The next summer we started a small ten week program for twenty Seattle youths gathered from a teen drug rehab program, the city parks department, and the Native American Heritage High School. Canon supplied cameras and Ilford sent film supplies. SAFECO provided start-up funds. The Photographic Center NW provided darkrooms and Benham Gallery offered wall space for an exhibition.

Fourteen of the participants finished the program. The exhibit was a smashing success. Everyone felt good about project. Then one of the students said, “What’s next?” One of the instructors said, “I think we should do it again next summer but we can do it better.” And that has been a pattern that has moved us to a quarterly class schedule with four levels of black and white traditional photography, two levels of digital classes. Several special community programs and a freelance service are offered. Admission is via an application and interview. A time commitment is the only tuition.

Forty-four young people will complete the fifteenth Summer Session. YIF started its year-round programs in the damp basement of a former city jail. Very secure facilities but very close. The current “penthouse” facilities are superbly designed and equipped. The annual income budgeted to supporting a staff of four plus three interns and six instructors is a great concern when economic indicators head south.

If YIF is going to grow and serve more youth in our communities we have to be ready and able to show evidence that we are doing what we say we are doing. Two years ago our Board of Directors asked for an independent evaluation of the program.

The evaluation was designed around the following questions:

*Are the programs designed and implemented consistently with best practices and evidence-based strategies in arts programs?
*Does YIF meet program goals and objectives related to nurturing artistic sensibility, building positive identity and increasing social competence?
*How can YIF better meet program goals?
*What impact do the programs have on the youth and the community?

This independent team used a variety of data gathering means and produced a valuable seventeen page summary evaluation. Four program successes and four areas for improvement were identified. These areas have been included in the organizations strategic plan for the next three years.

It’s important to note that YIF’s ability to execute a quality evaluation effort was due to receiving a grant (in our case, from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation) that funded our ability to hire an outside expert. With all the recent focus on generating outcome data, our experience clearly says that neither funders nor the programs themselves should expect to be able to produce meaningful data simply by layering an evaluation protocol on top of already stretched staffs and resources and not without the help of experts in developing the right tools to tease out sometimes quite nuanced discoveries. We believe that if funders want this data, they should be ready and willing to help generate it. If program agencies want this data, they should be ready, willing and able to put in the effort to generate findings that are meaningful and not that simply support pre-determined assumptions.

In conclusion, my point here in his brief essay is not to answer these questions by providing results of the evaluation. Rather I wish to emphasize the importance of systematically looking inward to evaluate our programs. I believe that we need to continue to ask ourselves if we are doing what we say we are doing - and how well we are doing it.

We have to be solid on our claims that we are making a difference.

Walter Bodle, Founder
Youth in Focus, (www.youthinfocus.org)

IPE Editors Note: To continue discussing the issues that Walter raised in his thought provoking essay, please feel free to comment on the post or log on to our IPE FORUM. We welcome your feedback, ideas and discussions.

Using Photovoice to Examine and Initiate Youth Empowerment in Community-Based Programs: A Picture of Process and Lessons Learned

Californian Journal of Health Promotion 2006

Sherer W. Royce1, Deborah Parra-Medina2, and DeAnne H. Messias2
1Coastal Carolina University
2University of South Carolina

Authors Royce, Parra-Medina and Messisas (2006) used Photovoice as a research method to examine youth empowerment in two community-based youth programs in South Carolina.  This article describes the challenges and insights from implementing such programs.

Click here to view full article.

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