While most Whitman students take them for granted, digital cameras are not available in many places. With this in mind, the Los Manos Unidas club is collecting used, functioning cameras through the end of the school year. The club will send the cameras this summer to Esmeraldas, Ecuador, to support photojournalism workshops for young Colombian refugees.
Photojournalist Felipe Jacome (’03) works with the UN High Commission for Refugees to organize the workshops for 15- to 25-year-olds. He hopes to lend the cameras to children, so they can take pictures of their community. Workshops will occur at a youth center and the local university.
The workshops aim to offer young people an alternative to violence, guerrilla warfare and narcotics trafficking on the Ecuador-Colombia border, Jacome said.
“If you give kids an alternative activity for them to get involved in, then they don’t just stick to the streets, where they usually get in a lot of trouble,” he said. “The Ecuador-Colombia border is a place where there is a presence of armed groups, so a lot of young kids can also be subject to recruitment.”
Carol Gough-Alonso, the Los Manos Unidas club sponsor, hopes that the Whitman community can help.
“It’s a lot to ask of people, to give a camera,” she said. “It’s a very generous donation.”
Besides helping the children, Jacome also hopes that the pictures the children take will help inform the world about the border violence.
“The idea is for people to be able to document their own reality,” he said. “The best person to document that is not me through my pictures, but them, through their own pictures and through their own words.”
The young adults who take the pictures can keep them, but Jacome hopes that international publications and blogs will also publish them.
Junior Ryan Slayen, one of the club members co-running the drive, hopes that the charity will help people his age across the globe.
“Kids in less fortunate areas should have the opportunities that we do to take pictures,” he said.
To contribute, drop off digital cameras in room A315.
goodidea • Jun 5, 2010 at 6:45 pm
what a great idea for an activity. They did something similar like this in India and the photos that came as a result were amazing.
Carol A. Gough Alonso • Jun 5, 2010 at 9:03 am
Thanks Lucy and the B&W for your support with this worthy cause. I will use this link to help support the last week of our drive. Lucy, as of yesterday, we have collected 18 cameras! Amazing! Thanks again for your help.