Nancy McGirr has spent two decades in Guatemala finding value amid castoffs. The symbolism did not escape her when she started teaching photography to a handful of children whose families eked out a living scavenging through the festering, grimy heaps of the capital’s municipal dump.

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Two decades of tackling poverty with photography – in pictures
In 1991, photojournalist Nancy McGirr hit upon the idea of inviting children living and working in the slums of Guatemala City to photograph their experiences. Twenty years later, Fotokids is still going strong. Read more

CHIME FOR CHANGE Through the Years: The Female Fabric is a series curated by CHIME Managing Editor Mariane Pearl featuring stories from the CHIME journalism platform archives by women around the world. Read more

I founded Fotokids 28 years ago after leaving my career as a Reuters news agency’s combat staff photographer in Central America. Originally, the program started with six kids from Guatemala City’s vast garbage dump. Read more

Fotokids is a Guatemala-based non-profit started in 1991 by ex-Reuters photojournalist, Nancy McGirr. I’ve just come off a week with Nancy. She is an amazing force and has done wonderful things with the kids in Guatemala City and Santiago Atitlan. Her program provides kids with the skills and confidence to move out of some pretty hard conditions. Read more

In 1991, then Black Star photojournalist Nancy McGirr, handed cameras to eight children who lived with their families alongside thousands of others in Guatemala City’s municipal garbage dump and had them document their lives. A project she thought she might do for six months celebrated its 20th anniversary this year. Read more