Collective Lens: Photography for Social Change

Poverty exists in every part of the world. Poverty affects every race and every religion. Poverty can be a result of homelessness, but can also affect those that work hard for their living. Poverty can be a result of economic issues, mental illness, physical disabilities, a lack of education, bad luck, or old age.

Poverty is everywhere. The photos below were uploaded from people around the world as a cry for help on behalf of those who can not afford to help themselves.

You can now follow us on Twitter. Check us out at twitter.com/collectivelens, and send us ideas for photos or for our blog.

In an effort to raise awareness of not just the environment, but also sustainability, the Prix Pictet has been announced as a new major prize in photography. Sponsored by Swiss Bank Pictet & Cieand The Financial Times, the prize of 100,000 Swiss Francs will be awarded on October 20, 2008 (and annually thereafter). Photographers from around the world were recently nominated for the prize based upon the impact and artistic quality of their work.

We've been getting a lot of new photos lately thanks to you. In an effort to highlight some of the best that have been uploaded to our site, here are some of the most powerful photos from the archives.

Sudanese Refugees Playing Football by Matthew McInnis

If you haven't already noticed, we're pleased to announce that you may now mark photos that you've uploaded on Collective Lens with Creative Commons licenses. Our primary goal here at Collective Lens is to promote awareness of important issues. By allowing others to use your photos with a Creative Commons license, you are helping to spread your photos around the web, thus raising awareness.

As the popularity of "gap year", career breaks, and "voluntourism" style travel continue to grow around the world and with so many programs to choose from, where does a potential volunteer start? Should you work in a school? Teach sports? Help build a house? Save turtles? Work in a zoo or help in an orphanage? All worthy options, but for the more creative among you, there is a now a new sector of the volunteer market to consider...

Please check out Global Justice For Burma, and help bring justice for the deserving people of a country left behind by its leaders.

Coinciding with the opening of the Beijing Olympics on August 8, 2008, this group will launch an international campaign to bring Burma’s General Than Shwe and the military regime in Burma (officially known as the State Peace and Development Council or SPDC) to justice by referring them to the International Criminal Court.

Sorry about this, but it's time for a little bit of shameless self promotion. With the help of WidgetBox, we've created some widgets that you can place on your website to help bring awareness to the photos and organizations that we showcase here on Collective Lens. You can get a widget that shows the latest uploaded photos, or you can get on that has the most recent blog posts and articles (each in thin or wide, sizes are adjustable).

We wanted to take a moment to highlight a few of the best photos submitted to our Collective Lens Flickr group in the past few weeks. We now have more than 3,000 photos in our group. Thanks everyone! (Click each photo to view the original on Flickr and learn more.)