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.”

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.