Climate change: Everyone talks about it, only a few people live with it (and its consequences) - so far. The ones feeling the effects of climate change, other environmental and social conditions normally don’t get the opportunity or have the ability to talk about it: rural, mostly poor and so called disadvantaged groups of people. The project PhotoVoice tries to fix this imbalance by giving them a voice – through pictures, not taken of them but by them. The concept is as simple as it is smart: the program acknowledges the power of visuals in nowadays world, understands and evaluates the knowledge and deep feeling of humans living in specific situations and environments. People in the target group get trained in photojournalism, in a next step the images produced by them are getting promoted through the web, newsletters, mainstream media, development media, events and exhibitions – providing an access channel to the decision makers affecting those people’s lives. Founded in 1998 the project already won several awards -among them the Wavemakers Award and the arts, culture and heritage category at the Charity Awards for Transparency. Since 1999 PhotoVoice, based in London, UK, has initiated over 15 projects working in 12 different countries pioneering the use of photography with refugee groups, rural groups, street children and special needs groups. Partnership projects included those with UNICEF and Amnesty International. One of the projects dealing with natural conservation and environmental awareness is called “The Kashmir Seasons Project”. Giving the cameras in 150 children’s hands, they got the chance to document the different seasons in earthquake affected Kashmir. The goal: to educate about how nature can absolute devastate if we don't take care of what we have. But PhotoVoice wants more than that: it aims to promote Self-Development through encouraging participants to gain confidence in their capabilities and their role in civil society.
It tries to promote Advocacy through enabling participants to become advocates for change.
And, last but not least, PhotoVoice projects may also result in a better standard of living by selling and marketing images produced by PhotoVoice participants on their behalf.Fotos: Website