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It’s so much a part of our world, our innate curiosity about people. We like to look at pictures of them! We like to take them and we like to look at them. It’s what we do as human beings that have this tool—the camera. it’s just so much a part of understanding the world that we have to negotiate with it. We have to figure it out.
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.
Activist Award Director Kathleen Hennessy travels to Guatemala as a volunteer photographer and meets Claudia Jona, an 11-year-old Mayan girl. “Being journalists, we are trained not to get too close, to be objective. How can you be objective when it comes to a suffering child? But, here, I am not working as a journalist. I am a volunteer. I have permission to care. I have permission to give.”
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.
Across the world, traffickers supply millions of human beings for use in forced labor activities such as domestic service, or work in rice fields, sweatshops, cocoa plantations, or mines. Some are trafficked into the commercial sex industry. Trafficking touches every single nation – America, Europe, Africa, Asia & more. There are an estimated 27 million people enslaved in our world right now. And human trafficking is the third most profitable illegal activity, right under arms dealing and drug trade.
An interview with Adria Mooney and James DiPadua, the founders of Partners with GLOW, an organization working to help AIDS orphans in Zambia in partnership with the GLOW Club. GLOW (Girls Leading Our World) is a loosely defined organization started by a Peace Corps volunteer, and has since spread throughout the Peace Corps. Adria and James visited Adria’s sister, Alyssa Mooney, in Zambia. Alyssa is currently a Peace Corp volunteer in Mushota, Zambia, and her work inspired Adria and James to become involved when they returned home to the U.S.
Thousands of children are being sold or trafficked within and across national borders in South Asia. According to United Nations, more than one million children are subject to sexual exploitation in Asia alone.