Fotokids was founded in 1991 by ex-Reuters photojournalist Nancy McGirr, who handed cameras to eight children that lived with their families alongside thousands of others in Guatemala City's municipal garbage dump and had them document their lives.

Our program in this poverty stricken Mayan, Tzutuhil village began in 1997 as part of a six year program designed to have the children from various communities in Guatemala use photography and writing skills to look at the effects of Guatemala’s 36 year civil war.

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 and continued until the graduate students took it over in 2015.

In 1994, Fotokids received a European Union grant for Spanish Voices, a three year program that brought children together from diverse backgrounds, including Polisario refugees in Western Sahara, Bangladeshi students from East London, and those from a small village in Spain.

In 1997 just after the Peace Accords were signed putting an end Guatemala’s 36-year civil war, Fotokids initiated a project to bring together children from areas that had been strongly affected by the violence.

Girls Life Skills, a 3-year accelerated media technology and gender empowerment program, is designed to teach critical thinking skills to teenage girls about options in life.

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.

Fotokids under the auspices of Mercy Corp, in a USAID funded project, was contracted to work with children living within contiguous gang dominated neighborhoods to build a sense of community and help develop their strength to fight back.