Autumn 2018 Newsletter
©Chris Vail 2018 N. McGirr taking pix of Fotokids vinyls during the Bronx exhibit of Latin American Photography
Letter from the Founder N. McGirr
I am sure you have all been reading about children separated from their parents by U.S. immigration. In light of this, I feet this is a good opportunity to talk about the impact Fotokids has had in keeping over a thousand young people from immigrating, and the even larger picture of our influence globally.
I had no idea when I started Fotokids 27 years ago in Guatemala City’s garbage dump, that photography could be used as a tool to teach so many things and could get children excited about learning. Since the very first article in the Washington Post in 1991, Fotokids, focusing uniquely on a long term commitment, was the first of its kind and inspired a concept replicated by other photographers in India, East Timor, Nepal, Colombia, Belize, Mexico, London, Algiers, Finland, Tarawa Kiribati, Kenya, Algiers, etc. and continues to thrive as global learning tool. We have personally advised many of these projects.
Fotokids objectives go way beyond the idea of taking a good photo, this is a secondary benefit (although we always hope we have many good photos)! We are teaching young people to observe. Perceiving your surroundings in a different way, and learning to develop a visual voice through images, discovering how to do that creatively are some of Fotokids goals. How can I be an agent of change? The study of photography is an ideal tool to inspire discussion and ultimately stimulate the search for possible solutions. It is an excellent key to open up the feelings of young people and to further encourage them to develop the valuable skill of writing.
Doris Summer, Director of the Cultural Agents Initiative at Harvard, recognized this when she said that Fotokids had inspired her to creat her 3-year program to connect photography programs around the world. We have spread the Fotokids methodology through our exhibits attended by Fotokids students in fourteen countries and in over forty exhibits. These students have had the opportunity to interact with young people from other countries and share their ideas.The many television, radio, newspaper and magazine articles we have also inspired others to replicate our project. Check out Fotokids CV here [https://wordpress.com/page/fotokidsinsider.wordpress.com/735]
This is how a program like ours can be adapted to serve in so many ways. We have used our photography curriculum to work in many venues . We have helped children with HIV, and wheelchair bound kids with spinal problems. We developed a six-year program that dealt with the affects of civil war on children in diverse areas of Guatemala. We have explored the U.N. Rights of the Child with an E.U. grant that involved Bangladeshi students from the East-end of London, a small village in Southern Spain, and Polisario refugees from the Sahara.
Vivi teaching HIV positive children in Guatemala City
©Nancy McGirr Margaret Burr teaching in the Sahara, Tinduf Algiers Rights of the Child project
©copyright Nancy McGirr 2005 Linda Morales in Uganda
The Girls Life Skills project has given our high school age girls a chance to get jobs with their Fotokids vocational diploma in technology and the media arts thus vastly expanding their horizons.
A fifteen-year program in Honduras, GUARUMA founded by Fotokids became it’s own entity and uses our programs to teach ecology and environmental education. We increased educational levels there from primary school to middle school in five years from 10% to 93%. Children from this project have gone on to form their own eco-tour company, work in the national parks, and become professional photographers as well as, birding and wildlife guides.
©Franklin Ramirez- Honduras GUARUMA Finalist BBC Young Nature Photographers
Our project with the California’s Central Valley and the Cutler Orosi school system, working with children of farm workers, has been so successful in giving the kids an identity and mainstreaming them into the U.S. culture that the school system is continuing it forward by themselves.
Currently we work in the gang areas of Guatemala City where we start the kids at an early age giving them an identity, a peer group, skills that require discipline and creativity and scholarships that follow them from primary through university. This functions as a preventative program to impede gang recruitment. Fotokids students have given workshops in in Spain, Mexico city with street kids, London, and a keynote speaker at an environmental conference in Adelaide Australia. Not only have our programs been replicated by photographers but also by our international volunteers. Young people from Holland, England, France, Australia, Spain, Vietnam, Austria and the U.S. have carried the seeds of giving back with them and have created their own amazing projects.
Ex-volunteers have gone on to work with: HIV in Kenya, women’s projects in Afghanistan, children in a cancer ward in the States, heading up charter schools, working with migrant children, forming their own advertising & design agencies, publishing photo books, teaching at universities, community organizers, producing films, and creating leadership programs.
I know that was a lot of blah-blah but I feel you might want to know these things in order to tell others that Fotokids, though small, not only works, but that it has been used globally as an important model.
Now for some more news updates! I went to NYC to see the inauguration of the exhibit we participated in of Latin American photographers, at the Bronx Documentary Center and it was wonderful. The BDC did a great job of printing and framing 35 prints and did splendid vinyl murals of Fotokids photographs that stretched around the block. The opening had an excellent turnout. I am very pleased and hope this will be the start of a long-term collaborative relationship. NYT- check out Fotokids pix [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/09/lens/overlooked-stories-from-latin-american-photographers.html] here
We need 25 educational scholarships this year, for 10 kids from Mesquital and 15 from Santiago Atitlán. These sponsorships are $600 year and we monitor, do monthly school and family visits, tutor, buy books and pay monthly fees. You can donate on our website http://www.fotokidsoriginal.org [http://www.fotokidsoriginal.org] or by check made out to Fotokids and sent to: Fotokids 1333 Jones St. #1001, San Francisco CA 94109.
So please talk to your friends and family and see if each of you can interest one or two supporters. I’m sorry to put this funding request in the middle of the newsletter, I usually post it on the last page in the How you can Help section, but we have even more students eligible for scholarships next year, so I have to get on it! We took on no new students in 2018 in order to make sure we can afford the continuing scholarship expenses.
At the end of this month, I went to Sedona AZ to speak at Valley Verde, an international boarding school and to their community at large. I was very impressed with both the students and the quality of the teaching staff. We will do a joint workshop with 10 of the Arizona students and our Santiago Atitlán group in November. We hope to make this an ongoing relationship; participation by both staff and kids would I believe make for a valuable cultural exchange.
Exhibit Alert-Next year in November, we will be having an exhibition at the Studio@620 in St. Petersburg, Florida.
What’s new with the Kids
I think one of the things I like best every year during our August anniversary party is to visit with the returning Fotokids graduates. It makes me feel happy to see how they have taken the opportunities offered them and have gone forward, often against a strong current of obstacles.
Josefa could not attend the party because she was doing her oral exams for her university degree in social work. She later left me a message that she had passed! This was no surprise to me. Here is a single mother who spent five years studying, as well as working for us visiting every Fotokids family in the Santiago Atitlán community once a month. When she was not doing that, she was teaching our Girls Life Skills class giving them the necessary tools to help pull them out of poverty.
Jessica Lopez who began her university career in education with a Fotokids scholarship (2010) mentioned to me at the anniversary party that she had found her passion in giving workshops for a non-profit involved in early pregnancy prevention. Unfortunately, it pays nothing, but she used her graphic design skills learned in Fotokids years ago, to land a steady job in design for a major manufacturer. The job enables her to follow her dream of working for the non-profit and still be able to cover living expenses. Another affirmation that our vocational programs do work! Jess said, “ They would never have hired me, but for my skill as a graphic designer.”
At the Anniversary party-Santiago Atitlán young women staffers show off how they have embroidered “Fotokids” into their huipiles! (blouses)
Nancy Morales (B.A. graphic design) just got a great job as designer/photographer with the IGA, (The Guatemalan American Institute).The IGA works with the U.S. Embassy on cultural exchanges. It’s a good job and she had to beat out a lot of competition in order to get hired. Rumor has it that Berta Garcia a Fotokids graduate (she was with us from nine years of age through the university where she studied law) and who currently works with the human rights commission, is considering running for Mayor of Santiago Atitlán! Oswaldo Batres is teaching English in two schools and Sam Zepeda is working a Call Center and as an English teacher.
Santiago Atitlán-Berlin and Andres worked on renovations at the Santiago school. With grants from Lafayette Orinda Presbyterian Church and the Ross family we: put in a new floor, replaced the bathtub with a storage space, upgraded the bathroom, and put in new lighting. Outside we constructed a stone pathway where the grass had been, (pounded to mud by many little feet), a new entry gate with lock, repaired the back wall, and cleaned out tree roots from the pipes.
We are filming two more videos for Oxford University Press with Colette Thomson of Footstep productions. Emelyn will once again be the star, and she will be interacting with her co-stars in the Basque country. We all had some problems at first pronouncing the Basque names. Filming, along with Fotokids extras, will continue at the All Souls Day celebration in San Juan Sacatepéquez where huge Kites, some 40 feet in diameter, fly heavenward with messages addressed to the ancestors.
©Jorge/Fotokids2015 Kite makers raise one of the huge kites on All Soul’s Day
Gerardo’s class of primary school kids participated in a workshop on wild greens and edibles given by the Ministry of Agriculture to help increase the use of vegetables in meal planning. Malnutrition is a big problem within our community and many of the families exist on black beans and tortillas or just tortillas with salt. Rocío is finishing her last year in film school and has been already working freelance in various productions. Werner is working in video, doing weddings and shooting for the German Embassy. Vivi is now in charge as the educational coordinator for Cuarto Mundo a French charity that gives art classes to kids that work in the markets.
How you can Help
U.S. Retirees -Donate your IRA distribution to charity, Fotokids that is!Retirees ages 70 1/2 or older who directly transfer their IRA withdrawals of up to $100,000 to a qualified charity will not owe income tax on the distribution http://www.investmentnews.com/article/20180103/FREE/180109989/new-tax-law-favors-charitable-giving-from-iras
Put us in your WILL. What better legacy is there than to give a kid a future? Our Legal Name is Fotokids Inc. and USA tax ID # 45-1261970 We need scholarships as mentioned in the newsletter, Educational $600 year, Fotokids Vocational $300. You may donate online at http://www.Fotokidsoriginal.org [http://www.childrenoffaithmissions.org/], on our Fotokids FB page, or make checks out to: FOTOKIDS Address for donations: Fotokids/Walt Trask, 1333 Jones St. #1001, San Francisco, CA 94109 [https://www.fotokidsoriginal.org/donation/], Or on our Fotokids FB page, or make checks out to: FOTOKIDS Send any donations to: Fotokids/Walt Trask, 1333 Jones St. #1001, San Francisco, CA 94109
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Vivi teaches computer basics to HIV positive children
