Fotokids brought our successful photography program to Honduras to work in the village of Las Mangas after the devastation fraught by Hurricane Mitch in the year 2000. The village is located on the edge of the Pico Bonito National Park, between the shores of the raging Cangrejal River and the Cloud Forest. The program’s focus was the use of photography and design to promote environmental education and conservation of the beautiful, unique natural resources that abound in the region.

Their award winning photographs have appeared in prestigious magazines such as Nature’s best and Ranger Rick. A Guaruma student has been a finalist twice in the BBC Young Nature Photographers competition.

The students created an interactive environmental classroom, provided environmental lectures to over 50 local schools, produced a learning DVD on the regional watershed, taught computers and photography in the school system, work as representatives with the National Park service and serve as professional guides on a nature trail they created and built, and designed and operated an interactive nature museum. They continue working as eco tourism guides and have set up their own eco tourism business.

In 1994 Fotokids began an alliance with children from the Western Sahara (Polisario refugees) Bangladeshi students from the east end of London, and a small village in Spain to examine the U.N. Rights of the Child as it applied to each of these groups.
The students traveled to London and the Director gave classes in Tindouf, Algiers. The 3 year project, called Spanish Voices and supported by the European Union focused on traditions, culture and the children’s dreams and culminated in a TV series shown on the BBC and a board game based on the rights of the child and free trade designed by the children, and fabricated in London, LocoCoco.

In 1997 just after the Peace Accords were signed, ending Guatemala’s 36-year civil war, Fotokids initiated a project to bring together children from areas that had been strongly affected by the violence. The called project to create youth leadership and strengthen democratic values in areas affected by the violence lasted six years and was supported in part by the Soros Foundation and the Reuters Foundation.
The program created links of understanding and compassion, by bringing together children affected by the violence and massacres. Students from the City, Santiago Atitlán y Santa Maria Tzejá Ixcán examined the conflict through extensive interviews with massacre survivors and produced written testimonies of their flight, life in Mexican refugee camps, (or of the 12 years of hiding in the mountains) and subsequent problems on return to Guatemala. The students produced photo illustrations and created videos, leaving a personal powerful legacy for future generations.

Girls Life Skills enables young women to consider a different perspective that will guide them in the process of self-discovery, learning to dream, forming goals and developing their self-confidence.
They learn to tell their stories using self-portraits, photo essays, journals, video and discussion forums. Women professionals in non-conventional careers are invited to speak to the students. Analysis, discussion and search for solutions related to women’s issues within their communities are discussed as well as information on sexuality and pregnancy prevention.
This successful three-year IT program is ongoing and has graduates studying for university degrees in law, social work, architecture, graphic design, education and engineering.

Fotokids worked with the Cutler Orosi school system in California’s Central Valley to help integrate children of farm workers into the general school population using our photography curriculum on identity. This program was supported by the state school system for five years and they then took it over as part of their after school program for migrant children and it continues today.
Fotokids’ Central Valley program focuses on first-generation Spanish speaking immigrants. Research and experience has shown that immigrant youth are at high risk of becoming disconnected from school and other positive institutions that would otherwise be able to help support their learning and development. Schools often struggle to involve recent immigrants in the activities that would provide them with opportunities for meaningful membership in a positively oriented group.

Fotokids under the auspices of Mercy Corp in a USAID project, worked with children living within contiguous gang dominated neighborhoods to build a sense of community and help develop their strength to fight back. Fotokids part was using photography to work with 200 new young people and inspire a sense of identity and promote leadership. The program culminated in three exhibitions held in the barrios we worked in, Villa Nueva, El Bucaro and on the fringe of the garbage dump.

Fotokids teachers worked with children In Guatemala City who had contracted HIV before birth. It was important as they were approaching adolescence, to not only educate them on the condition and how to live with it, but to help them shape an identity that wasn’t just based on the fact they were HIV positive.

Several years ago, one of our older students who grew up next to the garbage dump, Evelyn Mansilla, now Executive Director, came to us while completing her journalism degree at the University of San Carlos, with the dream of giving back to her community in a unique and highly personal way.

Evelyn had decided to start her own project in a small impoverished neighborhood an hour away from Guatemala City (Ciudad Quetzal). Every Saturday Evelyn took time out of her busy schedule to commute to Ciudad Quetzal to teach a group of 9 students between the ages of 6 and 13. The results have been impressive. Evelyn’s students have all been quick studies and their grades in school have skyrocketed since their first day of class.

La Lucerna
Fotokids contracts its successful program to other nonprofits. As part of Plan International’s Voice and Expression program we initiated a 6-month project working with poor children in an isolated village on the skirts of the active volcano Fuego. Fotokids uses photography and writing skills to promote creativity, self-expression, self-confidence and encourage leadership skills, in this case to a group of 5th and 6th graders.

Fotokids designed a three year photography program as therapy and empowerment for children with spina bifid a and other spinal problems in conjunction with Transitions. The wheelchair bound children from 5 to 12 years old, had one Fotokid from the City as their personal mentor and teacher. For many it was their only outing all week and they zoomed around Antigua Guatemala taking photographs, gaining confidence and learning to see.