“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

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.

In 2009, the founders of Collective Lens will travel to Africa, the Middle East, and Asia to showcase the cultures, issues, and charitable organizations of third world countries. No matter where you live, there are many stereotypes and assumptions about other cultures that often prohibit one’s ability to make a personal connection. By showing the differences and similarities between cultures, we believe that more people will be encouraged to reach out to their neighbors across the globe.

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.

During the recent post-election riots in Kenya, bloggers and other “citizen journalists” began an online project to map the locations of attacks and violent outbreaks, and Ushahidi.com was born

Over one billion people do not have clean drinking water. An organization known as charity: water is working to ensure that everyone in the world has access to clean water.

Blood:Water Mission was founded in the name of Jesus Christ’s sacrificial gifts of blood and water, and its primary goals are to help rid the African continent of AIDS and provide clean drinking water to the poverty stricken people of Africa.