Kids+Cameras
| Kids+Cameras |
| In the spring of 2011, my girlfriend, Courtney Owen and I left on a trip to visit our friend Rachel in Chiang Rai, Thailand. Rachel runs an organization called The SOLD Project, which focuses on providing local children with a supplementary education in order to combat issues of human trafficking. Their idea is that by providing opportunity for the children and helping them to finance their education and keep them in school, they will be more equipped to enter jobs that do not land them in the hands of sex traffickers or other forced/coerced labor. In Chiang Rai, they have a Resource Center that welcomes children and other members of the community to learn important skills that are not always taught in school. Along with our suitcases and our own cameras, Courtney and I brought along 10 film single lens reflex cameras so that we could teach an art form that is so influential in our lives, to these children who commonly visit the Resource Center. We spent three days teaching a photography work shop for any of the kids who were interested. The numbers grew each day as soon as the word got it. What we experienced was incredible. The kids had tons of fun running around the Resource Center and their village photographing everything from family members to rice patties. The images that they produced were just as awesome. The kids were so happy looking through their photos on the digital cameras that we had and sharing them with one another. Eventually, after we left, Rachel developed the film that the students took and gave the film to the students. They were so proud of their work and even got to hold their own little art show at a location in Chiang Rai. While we were teaching the workshop, I specifically remember Courtney turning to me after helping some of the kids learn to use their cameras and saying, "Robby…I could do this." Her ambiguity let our minds wander in the future to taking this same concept and applying it in our own community (and maybe one day in the communities of others). So here we are… We wanted do create the same experience for other children in our community, so that is why we have now begun to prepare a project, very similar to what we did in Thailand for a public school in Santa Barbara. If you have any interest in this, I would encourage you to visit our website, www.KidsPlusCameras.com to learn more about our on-going activity. Thank you for visiting. Follow Kids+Cameras on: Twitter Blog Newsletter |
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