Looking Through Their Eyes: A Photo Empowerment Project
Looking through their eyes is a photo empowerment project for youth, which is designed to encourage them to discuss and engage in local issues that effect their communities. It facilitates the opportunity for young people to look critically at their environment, share emotions, build unity, and brainstorm together. Most importantly, the photo empowerment project builds confidence and challenges kids to effect change in their lives.
Photography:

The first step is making a connection with a local youth group or organization. We begin by sitting together in small groups of varied age and gender and teaching them how to use the digital cameras. With a laptop we are able to review the photos with almost instant feedback. The participants are always very enthusiastic - for many of them it is the first time they have ever seen or had the opportunity to use such technologies. After the training, each person is given a camera for a couple of days and asked to answer the following questions in the form of pictures:
  • What do you like about living in your community?
  • What you don't like about living in your community?
  • What makes you happy?
  • What makes you sad?
  • What makes you angry?
The photos are both provocative and artistic and give us the rare opportunity of "looking through their eyes" and beginning to understand and talk about some of the realities of living in poverty. To see slideshows of the kids photos see the following links: Borgne youth group Shada II (UJDS)
Discussions:

With all the participants together, we review and discuss all the photos. The photographer explains why he or she took the picture, and we talk about the emotions they provoke. Following the presentations, we hold group discussions focusing on their shared joys and concerns. Topics include food, hunger, dirty drinking water, toilets and sanitation, going to the bathroom in public, lack of medication and educational opportunities, children with no shoes or clean place to play, liquor sold on the streets and the treatment of disabled people. Many of the photos reflected the joy they find in their friendships and families and the deep respect for nature and the gardens which provide so much of their food. We talk about what they can do as children and young adults, to address the problems in their community and to try to make a difference in their futures.
Actions:

As a follow up to the discussion participants, are encouraged to come up with concrete actions that they can take in their communities to make change. The first group in rural Borgne a group of young girls 9-14 wrote a song called "don't just poop anywhere," to educate other children. The older group 16-22 wrote a project to provide treated drinking water to their neighborhood. In Shada, an urban slum of Cap-Hatian, we returned a month later to find out that a group of kids started their own organization "U.J.D.S" (United Teenagers of Shada). This group has since engaged in several projects with SOIL including Fatra pa Egziste and the construction of the first public ecological toilet in their community.
Celebration:

Finally together we organize a community art showing and celebration, inviting church and community leaders, parents and family members. The kids are given $100 and their organization is completely responsible for organizing the party. The show gives hundreds of people the chance to see the pictures and provides the kids with an opportunity to express their feelings and ideas to the wider community.
Conclusion:

This project is very special to us. We feel that it stimulates the participants and empowers them to a new level of awareness, giving them more hope to affect change in their community. We hope this new tool will further the opportunity for discussion and empowerment of youth all over the country, and the issues they face living in poverty. We also use the photographs to educate people back in the United States about the realities faced by our brothers and sisters here in Haiti, giving them a glimpse of the hardships of living in absolute poverty.