We intend to undertake this project with groups of children in slums and shelter homes and give them an opportunity to photo-document various aspects of their daily lives. Selected children within each group will be trained in the use of digital cameras to capture moments which THEY think are important as they undergo their daily routines. Photos will be shortlisted by the groups themselves and annotated in local language and English.
Selected photos will be uploaded online and also presented at an exhibition event for the general public and at select elite educational institutions.
Topical focus:
Country:
What locality or neighborhood will your project focus on?
Lucknow
Describe the specific population with whom you will be working.
ProjectKHEL works with underprivileged children such as street children, slum children, orphans, children of migrants and domestic labour, etc. For this particular project, we would train children from one slum and two shelter homes for girls in the use of cameras and basic photography skills. Most of the slum children do not go to school and most of them work as ragpickers, beggars or sell petty items. The girls in one of the shelter homes attend school while the girls at the other do not step out of the confines of their ‘home’. None of them would have computer or internet familiarity so we would be helping them annotate and post their photographs online.
We feel very little is know about these childrens’ daily lives and struggles. Such a project would bring them some visibility online.
Who else will be on your team to help implement the project?
Angana Prasad – https://www.facebook.com/angana.prasad
Alisha Asif – https://www.facebook.com/alisha.asif.3
What kinds of news, stories and other content will be created?
Photo blogs, short videos and exhibition of photographs will be created at the end of this project. All will be aimed at documenting the lives of the participants. All of the content will be created by the children or along with the children, if they need help with annotations and English.
The idea is not to capture anything very dramatic but to capture glimpses of their daily lives – which might seem normal and mundane to them but would be an eye-opener to the rest of society.
We would create one video per location from various video clips shot by the participants and post it to YouTube and Facebook as well.
Depending on the response we receive to the idea of the exhibition, we could even create desk calendars or planners for sale – proceeds going back toward the childrens’ education.
What technologies and digital tools do you plan to use in the trainings?
Describe the connections that you or your organization have already established or plan to establish that will contribute to the success of the project.
ProjectKHEL already works in slums, orphanages, shelters and schools for underprivileged children. We already have a rapport with the children and visit them twice a week for our sports and Life Skills Education sessions. One of the shelters is a government shelter for girls, the other is a non-profit shelter for girls and at the slum, we are working along with “Ehsaas-Friends of Street Children” under the “Safe City for Children campaign”.
We would be roping in a photographer to teach the basics of photography, especially composition, to the children.
How many participants do you think will be trained in your project?
As the microgrant will not be able to support a large number of cameras being distributed, we will buy TWO cameras for each of the THREE locations we will implement this project (i.e. SIX cameras). Based on interest and aptitude shown in the workshops, we will select 8-10 children at each location (therefore 24-30 children) who will use the cameras on a rotating basis.
We would be visiting the locations regularly to monitor the progress, download photos to laptop, organize and manage photos by photographer and date, and also help the groups (not just the chosen photographers) choose and annotate the photos.
Describe which technologies, tools, and media you will focus on when training participants.
We will be using photography and videos and training the participants in this. We will also be uploading the photo-stories or photo-blogs to online platforms such as Facebook. While the training of the children in the use of computers or internet is beyond the scope (budget) of this project, we will be sharing the outcomes with them, showing them the interest generated through their photos, and letting them know what is happening with their photos after we have posted them online.
Describe the facilities where you will hold the workshops.
We would not require any facilities per se. We generally work outside in empty plots, fields or parks. For the workshops, we will find an indoor location at the shelter homes and at the slum, perhaps conduct it outdoors. We will only require a projector and screen which we can rent, a laptop with internet.
What is your current relationship with the community with whom you plan to work? What makes you the most appropriate individual or organization to implement this project?
We have been working with the girls from one of the shelter homes for over a year, and with the children from the other shelter home and the slum for 3 months. At all three places, we intend working with them for at least one more year.
We enjoy a very good relationship with these children, who look forward to our visits twice a week. We have established a rapport wherein we have a lot of fun with them, but they also look up to us as mentors and teachers. We have conducted workshops on things such as self-presentation, substance abuse, personal hygiene and menstrual hygiene management – so we are quite sure the concept and workshops on photography will be very appealing and exciting to them.
What specific challenges do you expect to face when planning and implementing your project?
The only big challenge we foresee is the care of the cameras at one of the locations – the slum. We would need to appoint a couple of community youth leaders as project monitors who will be keeping an eye on the cameras and their use on a daily basis. The slum we work at is a very ‘difficult’ slum with drug and substance abuse, violence and theft being considered ‘normal’. However, the children we are working with are gradually coming to realise that we come there twice a week without fail to play and spend time with them and they are improving in terms of responsibility almost each week, so by the time we begin this project, this might no longer be a concern/ challenge.
How will you measure and evaluate the project’s impact, specifically: your primary participants, the wider regional community, or the global digital community?
For the primary participants, we determine impact by their learning of photography skills, use of cameras, taking up of responsibility/ leadership roles, etc.
We would like to make the exhibition event a big event with a chief guest and media invitations so more people from the ‘elite’ classes attend and some of the photographs are printed in newspapers. We would also take the exhibition on a ‘road show’ to various schools of the city so that children can get a glimpse into the lives of their counterparts who are not as fortunate. We would measure impact by not just the number of people who view the exhibition but by the quality of viewers and their feedback, comments.
The online photo blogs on various platforms will automatically provide ‘impact’ measures in the form of ‘likes'/ comment
If your project were to be selected as a Rising Voices grantee, what would be the general timeline of project activities in 2014?
Considering we are finalised, formalities completed and receive the microgrant or part of it by June 2014, we begin the project on 1st June.
Training workshops and selections would be completed by 20th june
We will give the photographers a total of 4-6 weeks with the cameras so the photography extends until August 5th.
Photo selection, annotation, creation of photo-stories, videos, etc. by the end of August
Exhibitions and upload to social media platforms in September and October 2014.
Detail a specific budget of up to $2,500 USD for operating costs.
No. Cost INR Total INR Total USD
Cameras
6 10000 60000 1000
Laptop
1 45000 45000 750
Photography workshops (for external expert/ refreshments/ renting projector and screen)
3 2500 7500 125
Travel (local conveyance)
24 200 4800 80
Exhibition (will require additional support from other sources of funding else self funded )
1 30000 30000 500
TOTAL 147300 2455
Besides the microgrant funding, what other support can Rising Voices provide for your project to ensure its success?
Rising Voices can help with a volunteer who can edit videos and create 3 compelling YouTube videos from the clips shot by the children.
Rising Voices can help take the online photo-blogs and videos to a larger audience through posts and social media and also help us post or advise us on various other platforms and forums we can post the output of the project.
Contact name
Akshai Abraham
Organization
ProjectKHEL
