July 28, 2005

Home/Life was a project that culminated in a website, book and an exhibition. 121 children (most of them homeless) in eleven cities around the world were given cameras to document the environment in which they live.

The website was designed by NairoBits, a digital design school in Nairobi that provides training to children from the slums. As I have mentioned before, it has been a dream of mine to help children I see living on the streets of Jakarta. This image is a common sight. It does tear my heart out... Sadly, children living in these types of conditions can be found throughout the world. Unless of course you live in China, where there are no homeless children: "In Beijing the workshop coordinator was forced to discontinue her search for homeless children, thwarted by government officials who assured her that there are no homeless children in China." See also, "sister" programs that are aimed at helping the children of Bantar Gebang, the "Garbage Belt" of Jakarta: My Life in Indonesia Eighty-five children from Jakarta took photographs of their lives - children from the rubbish dump, expatriate children and children from the orphanage. Children's Radio Station on the Dumpsite Children of these scavengers have started their own community radio station with the help of professional radio producers and social workers. The station is owned and run by the children themselves. And the majority of the programs is produced by and for the children from Bantar Gebang. The stations studio is situated on the dumpsite close to the homes of the participating children. The station covers an area of 20 kilometer in diameter. Idols Their life is the garbage. Their window on the world is the television. Their idols are models, soap-opera stars, dangdut singers, and other celebrities.

posted by sugarmilktea 18 years ago
  • Sugarmilktea, this post is quite fine It obviously took you some time There's much to peruse This sad human refuse The links, I count more than nine! can't ... stop ... writing in ... limericks ...
  • My dear Koko, thank you for the praise The time was not even a bit of waste Today MoFi was rather slow Alas, I posted a large load But why no one has had anything to say? curses limericks! you've infected my post!
  • It's currently the middle of the workday in the Americas, and you've served up the equivalent of a roast suckling pig mit all the trimmings. Can't possibly read this much heavy linkage until tonight. /goes back to work
  • /breaks spell They're too busy looking at all the links! I intend to give them a closer look at home. I should get *some* work done before I leave today!
  • similar to a project called Photovoice developed in 1992 by Caroline Wang of the U-M School of Public Health, and Dr. Mary Ann Burris. Led to the publication of two books: Visual Voices and Strength to Be; check out the gallery. Full disclosure: we know one of the photographers on the Flint, MI project. She was a student of mrs. deconstructo. The camera used in the Strength to Be project is a plastic, medium format camera that mrs. d. uses to teach photography--reduces the reliance on technology in the creative vision.
  • Excellent post, smt!! I continue to be amazed at the resiliency chidren posess.
  • Children, dammit! Children!!!!!!!! sigh.
  • Just got through the first 6 cities on Home/Life. I'm glad they have a range - not just all third world cities. But it's pretty harrowing work to do them all at once, not to mention the secondary links and the comment links. I think many of the Nairobi picture descriptions were written by an adult, which kind of took away from the "street kids showing their world on their terms" thing. Maybe a small quibble. So many of the children expressed their dreams for the future, and so many wanted to be policemen. Really nice for kids who aren't being taken care of to want to grow up to be what must be caretakers in their view. Though, I'd guess that lack of education and getting older and more cynical will change that. Maybe that sort of innocence increases their resilience, at least for a while. It was also interesting that glue huffing seemed to be regionalized. Hard to take, but hard to stop viewing.
  • As a word of warning, I would consider at least one of the photos in the Budapest set to be NSFW. That said, the Paramaribo photos are fascinating.