“During that month,” he told me, “I would sit with families in their homes in Kibera for an hour or two, talking. And by the end of our conversation, they would have pulled out these amazing, old photographs from shoeboxes that they had never shown anybody outside of their own family. This documentation of the Nubian community was something that nobody had ever seen before. So the pieces of this project were already all there

The Freedom to Create Prize celebrates the power of art to fight oppression, break down stereotypes and build trust in societies where the social fabric has been ripped apart by conflict, violence and misunderstanding. History shows that prosperous societies are founded upon creativity. Societies that encourage artistic expression build strong foundations for economic, political and cultural development. They will lead tomorrow’s world.

Fazal Sheikh is an artist and activist based in Zurich, Switzerland. His work has been widely exhibited, in institutions ranging from the Tate Modern to the Princeton University Art Museum to small huts in rural India. He has collaborated with numerous foundations and non-governmental-organizations, and he has won, among many other awards, a MacArthur Prize.

I asked him to do an interview with the PhotoPhilanthropy blog because he approaches collaboration, strategic partnerships and accessibility in a way that I find very inspiring.

“In a war, the normal codes of civilized behavior are suspended. It would be unthinkable in so called normal life, to go into someone’s home, where the family is grieving over the death of a loved one, and spend long moments photographing them. It simply wouldn’t be done.”

Kathleen Hennessy is the Director of Photography at the San Francisco Chronicle and has just joined PhotoPhilanthropy as the Activist Award Director for 2010.

I asked her everything that came rushing into my head. What is your editing process like? And how do you think photography creates social change? And what advice do you have for people submitting photo essays to PhotoPhilanthropy? Here’s what she said.

The Municipal Dump in Phnom Penh was the scene of abject poverty and hardship. It closed its gates in 2009 but is this the end of the story, what has happened to the people who worked as scavengers on the dump. The new dump has been moved several miles outside of the city and NO scavenging is to be allowed.

People of colour in South Africa, through the apartheid years, had limited opportunity and access to formal education. Ukulapha was recently formed with the overall objective of facilitating the growth, development, and empowerment of previously disadvantaged and abused South African people.

Two years ago, Anna Politkovskaya was gunned down in the elevator of her building. Politkovskaya was a journalist who was well-known for covering Russian governmental abuses and, in particular, the wars in Chechnya.

December 1st is World AIDS Day, and today and every day 4,000 people will die of AIDS in Africa. Important medical advances are not reaching Africa, but you can help.

Voices of Sudan, a photography book by David Johnson, hopes to raise awareness of the daily strife of the victims of the genocide in Darfur. 100% of the profits go directly towards constructing wells and supplying medicine to refugees in the region.