To all my family, friends, and anyone interested

I am beginning a photography project in Ghana!

There are so many reasons why photographs can be important: sometimes they can communicate stories, even across language and cultural barriers; sometimes they can be used to express daily realities, both hard and beautiful; sometimes they are valuable simply because they provide a record of a loved one that otherwise would not exist.

This is the idea:

Give students from an impoverished area access to cameras and basic photography skills, and challenge them to see and create and record their life and experiences. Take the time to get to know these students, to hear their stories and learn about there passions and dreams and what’s important to them. Create a venue for them to share their images and stories with people in their community, and people around the world.

Often, the images that we see in America that supposedly represent ‘Africa’ are either exotic or shocking. So it’s important for us to see images that come from one specific community in one specific city in one specific region in one specific country in Africa – images that have been taken by the very kids who are so often photographed themselves.

As much as the students that we work with stand to gain in terms of fun, experience and expression, we have to learn from them in terms of opening our eyes and breaking down our stereotypes.

These are the numbers:
2 teachers
4 cameras
8 students
10 weeks
5 rolls of film each
3 exhibitions (Ghana, California and North Carolina)
350 dollars to make it happen

The past few days have been busy with set up and planning work – I’ve visited the school I’m going to work in, met some of the kids, researched all the costs, baked cookies and sold them door to door on campus, and met up with a fellow student who’s just as excited as I am about this project.

We start on October 8th. But we need to raise at least $200 more.
If you’re interested and want to help, here’s what you can do:

1.Make a donation to our project through PayPal to miriam_alvarado@berkeley.edu
2.Mail a check to my family in California, who will credit my account (email me at miriam_alvarado@berkeley.edu for my address)
3.Keep checking this blog for more updates on the project.
4.Tell people!

Thanks for reading this,

with peace,