alucinora

camera drive for AIDESEP

2010-07-18T16:00:00.017-05:00

I am excited to announce a digital photo/video camera drive for AIDESEP, the umbrella organization for indigenous peoples of the Peruvian Amazon.

This camera drive was first envisioned while conversing with Daysi Zapata, who has recently re-assumed the role of Vice-President of AIDESEP after the return of President Alberto Pizango from exile. Daysi had been invited to speak at a public event hosted by NYU's Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, which is how we met. During her presentation, Daysi expressed the need to be able to counter the negativity toward indigenous peoples which she says is currently dominating the Peruvian media. She knows that AIDESEP and the indigenous peoples of Peru have many supporters around the world, and is eager to find ways to engage them in the present struggle over land rights.

Camera Drive
If you have a digital camera that you are no longer using--photo or video--please consider donating it to AIDESEP. You can also donate cords, batteries / chargers, and memory cards. You can either arrange to meet with one of the coordinators of this camera drive located in Brooklyn, Houston, Chicago, San Francisco, Phoenix, and Philadelphia, or ship it directly to Brooklyn, NY. If interested, write to donate.cameras[at]gmail.com. The goal is to collect 20 functioning cameras by January 15, 2011.

AIDESEP will use the cameras for a variety of purposes and projects. They will be useful in documenting the current changes occurring in the Amazon. Cameras will help the organization show the rest of the world not only the challenges indigenous peoples are facing, but also aspects of their livelihood they would like to protect. AIDESEP leaders are planning to use photography and video to educate Peruvians as well as the international community about their ways of life and cultural practices, which will help foster understanding and respect. Cameras will also enable local peoples to produce coverage of events which will diversify the media and represent different perspectives on issues.

As explained on its website, AIDESEP represents about 350,000 indigenous peoples who live in 1,350 communities, among whom 16 languages are spoken. AIDESEP writes that "somos una organización moderna que defendemos nuestra propia identidad, reconociendo sus fortalezas y combatiendo sus debilidades. De esta manera buscamos consolidarnos democráticamente como sujetos activos del cambio y así ser un testimonio del cambio que queremos ver en el mundo." Translation: "we are a modern organization defending our own identities, recognizing our strengths and combating our weaknesses. In this manner we look to democratically consolidate ourselves as active subjects of change and be testimony of the change we want to see in the world."

Daysi explained how in the past, AIDESEP has nurtured diplomatic relationships with the Peruvian government, resolving political friction through conversation and compromise. Unfortunately, the Peruvian government has not pursued this course of action in the recent past. Peruvian President Alan García's vision of development for Peru includes opening up large amounts of the Peruvian Amazon to transnational mining, logging and drilling companies, but indigenous peoples living on the land disagree with this kind of development, arguing that not only will it endanger their ways of life but will irrevocably damage the Amazon. In her presentation, Daysi said that García did not consult indigenous peoples about recent laws that he has passed which allow him to sign away land in the Amazon. García claimed that these reforms were necessary in order to comply with the recently signed Free Trade Agreement between Peru and the US. In an effort to make their opinions known, the communities of the Peruvian Amazon decided to stage a series of rallies and peaceful protests in mid-2009. For about two months, thousands of people of all ages stood in the road, blocking traffic through the Amazon to make clear their opposition to García's decrees and the FTA. García ordered the road cleared by force, sending in the national police to disband all participants. The resulting clash near the town of Bagua produced multiple fatalities on both sides.

Daysi firmly expressed AIDESEP's disagreement with the use of violence to resolve this conflict over land rights. She also conveyed a strong sense of determination to defend the land and livelihood of the peoples of the Amazon. Photo and video cameras will help AIDESEP better fulfill their media and communications plans. Cameras will help the organization connect to the international community, create valuable material to educate lawmakers and the public, and monitor any threats to human rights.

There is a wide variety of information that has been written in English about the current situation in Peru, a lot of which is in response to the clash at Bagua. For those who speak/read Spanish, AIDESEP's website is a valuable resource.

Useful links:
--info about the Free Trade Agreement between the US and Peru by the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, Foreign Policy in Focus, The Office of the United States Trade Representative, Public Citizen, and The Sierra Club
--a letter to the Attorney General of Perú from Human Rights Watch
--Amnesty International's call for investigations into the Bagua incident, which includes a link to a report (in Spanish)
--BBC's article about the clash
--BBC's article about the return of Alberto Pizango, President of AIDESEP
--Global Voices' article commenting on a year since the incident

Also, Witness.org, an organization that promotes the use of video to raise awareness of human rights violations, published an article about AIDESEP and the use of digital media to help document what happened in Bagua and the struggles over land rights involving indigenous communities and the government. This informative article is a strong argument for increasing AIDESEP's access to digital media, showing how valuable more cameras could be for the organization. You can read it here, and learn more on the Witness website.

Here is a recording of Daysi Zapata speaking before the US Congress in April 2010, a couple of days before presenting at NYU.

Again, if you have a digital camera that you are no longer using--photo or video--please consider donating it to AIDESEP. You can also donate cords, batteries / chargers, and memory cards. You can either arrange to meet with one of the coordinators of this camera drive located in Brooklyn, Chicago, San Francisco, Phoenix, and Philadelphia, or ship it directly to Brooklyn, NY. If interested, write to donate.cameras[at]gmail.com. The goal is to collect 20 functioning cameras by January 15, 2011.

Please forward this article to others who may be interested. Thanks.

Visit Camera Drive for AIDESEP on Facebook

campaña de cámaras para AIDESEP

2010-07-18T14:00:00.009-05:00

Estoy emocionada para anunciar una campaña de cámaras fotográficas y vídeos para AIDESEP, una gran organización que representa todos los pueblos indígenas de la selva Peruana.

Esta campaña de cámaras fue concebida durante una conversación con Daysi Zapata, quien recientemente retomó la posición de Vice-Presidenta de AIDESEP después de que el Presidente Alberto Pizango regresó de su exilio. Daysi y yo nos conocimos cuando fue invitada a presentar en un evento público por el Centro de los Estudios Latinoamericanos y del Caribe (CLACS) de la Universidad de Nueva York (NYU). En su presentación, Daysi expresó la necesidad de cambiar la imagen negativa de los pueblos indígenas que está saturando la prensa Peruana. Ella sabe que AIDESEP y los pueblos indígenas tienen apoyo de la comunidad internacional, y está interesada en involucrar a esta comunidad en la lucha sobre los derechos territoriales.

Campaña de Cámaras
Si Ud. tiene una cámara digital que no está ocupando--de fotografía o de video--por favor dónala a AIDESEP. Ud. puede donar cuerdas, pilas / cargadores, y tarjetas de memoria también. Personsas tambien pueden coordinar con una coordinadora de la campaña ubicado en Brooklyn, Houston, Chicago, San Francisco, Phoenix y Philadelphia, o la pueden enviar a Brooklyn directamente. Si tiene interés, por favor escriba al donate.cameras[at]gmail.com. Nuestra meta es tener 20 cámaras que funcionan antes del 15 de enero 2011.

AIDESEP usará las cámaras para una variedad de proyectos. Sean útil en documentar los cambios que están ocurriendo en las Amazonias Peruanas en esta época. Las cámaras ayudarán a la organización en mostrar el resto del mundo no solo las metas en frente de los pueblos indígenas, pero también aspectos de sus modas de vivir que requieren protección. Los líderes de AIDESEP están planificando usar la fotografía y video para educar los Peruanos y la comunidad internacional sobre sus vidas y cultura, para fomentar comprensión y respeto. Las cámaras permitirán que la gente local cubra los eventos que afecten sus vidas. Esto diversificará la prensa y representará más perspectivas sobre los asuntos.

Como está explicado en su sitio de web, AIDESEP representa más de 350,000 personas indígenas quienes viven en 1,350 comunidades y hablan 16 idiomas. AIDESEP escribe que "somos una organización moderna que defendemos nuestra propia identidad, reconociendo sus fortalezas y combatiendo sus debilidades. De esta manera buscamos consolidarnos democráticamente como sujetos activos del cambio y así ser un testimonio del cambio que queremos ver en el mundo."

Daysi explicó que en el pasado, AIDESEP había construído relaciones diplomáticas con el gobierno Peruano, buscando soluciones para la fricción política con conversación y compromiso. Desafortunadamente, el gobierno Peruano no ha seguido este curso de acción recientemente. El Presidente de Perú Alan García tiene una visión de desarrollo para el país que incluye abrir gran porciones de las Amazonias Peruanas a las compañías transnacionales de minería, perforación y petróleo. Pero los pueblos indígenas que están viviendo en la zona no están de acuerdo con este tipo de desarrollo; ellos discuten que no solo se lo pondrá sus modas de vivir en peligro pero también lo dañará irrevocablemente la Amazonia. En su presentación, Daysi dijo que García no ha consulado los pueblos indígenas sobre leyes recientes que han pasado que les permiten abrir tierra de las Amazonas para las compañías transnacionales. García ha reclamado que estas reformas son parte del Tratado de Libre Comercio Perú - Estados Unidos recientemente activo, un acuerdo que tomó muchos años en desarrollar pero que recibió las firmas finales al final del término del Presidente de los EEUU Bush en 2009. Para promover sus opiniones, las comunidades de las Amazonas Peruanas decidieron preparar una serie de manifestaciones pacíficas en la mitad del 2009. Para casi dos meses, miles de personas de todas edades se pararon por la autopista principal, bloqueando el tráfico de las Amazonas para hacer claro su oposición a los decretas y el Tratado de Libre Comercio. García los ordenó que terminara, enviando el policía nacional para disolver los participantes. Este conflicto, cerca del pueblo de Bagua, produjo fatalidades por ambos lados.

Daysi expresó firmemente que AIDESEP no está de acuerdo con el uso de violencia para resolver este conflicto sobre derechos territoriales. También ella demostró una determinación fuerte para defender la tierra y los pueblos indígenas de las Amazonas. Las cámaras de fotografía y video ayudarán a AIDESEP hacer sus planes de prensa y comunicaciones. Las cámaras ayudarán a la organización en conectar a la comunidad internacional, en crear materiales importantes para educar legisladores y el público, y en vigilar amenazas a los derechos humanos.

Hay una gran variedad de materiales en el internet de este tema. Obviamente, el sitio de AIDESEP es un gran recurso y un paso importante para empezar.

Artículos útiles:
--Violencia en la amazonia peruana (BBC Mundo, 6 junio 2009)
--Perú: Investigar violencia en Bagua (Human Rights Watch, 10 junio 2009)
--Perú: Presidente califica a indígenas de Bagua de “banda paramilitar” (Servindi, 11 enero 2010)
--Bagua: a un año de la barbarie ¿cuánto hemos avanzado? (La Región, 6 abril 2010)
--Perú: liberan a líder indígena (BBC Mundo, 27 mayo 2010)
--Gobierno: "los indígenas fueron manipulados" (BBC Mundo, 4 junio 2010)
--Perú: A un año de Bagua (Global Voices - Español, 5 junio 2010)
--Información sobre el Tratado de Libre Comercio Perú-EEUU (Gobierno de Perú)

Aquí hay un video de Daysi Zapata hablando en frente del Congreso de los EEUU en Abril 2010, algunos días antes de su presentación a NYU.

Si Ud. tiene una cámara digital que no está ocupando--de fotografía o de video--por favor dónala a AIDESEP. Ud. puede donar cuerdas, pilas / cargadores, y tarjetas de memoria también. Personsas tambien pueden coordinar con una coordinadora de la campaña ubicado en Brooklyn, Houston, Chicago, San Francisco, Phoenix y Philadelphia, o la pueden enviar a Brooklyn directamente. Si tiene interés, por favor escriba al donate.cameras[at]gmail.com. Nuestra meta es tener 20 cámaras que funcionan antes del 15 de enero 2011.

Por favor, si pueda enviar este artículo a los individuales con interés sería muy genial. Gracias.

Visita a Camera Drive for AIDESEP on Facebook

Paro in Peru: 8 July 2009

2009-07-13T18:54:00.008-05:00

Outside of the Central Market in Cusco, a throng of people slowly marched through the otherwise empty street, most traffic suspended for the day. They chanted “Urgente! Urgente! Nuevo presidente!” Some beat on drums, others blew horns.

On July 8, 2009, unions across Peru organized a national strike (paro). After several conversations with various Cusqueñans, and after reading newspapers and the wall of information posted for public display, I understand that participants used the strike to voice a quantity of grievances against the current president, Alan García.

I spoke with a municipal worker in the Plaza de Armas named Sylvester (left). In his opinion, “the platform of the fight is [that] our Peruvian government wants to privatize our natural resources, riches, and territory that had been adjudicated as part of the state.” Referencing a nationwide economic crisis, he condemned the Free Trade Agreement with the United States, claiming that it “doesn’t benefit us, the people of lesser resources; [it] only benefits those higher up [like] business owners.” Sylvester highlighted another point of the strike to be the nationalization of the factories, explaining that “before they belonged to the state but now they have been privatized. We want them to be nationalized, and not in the hands of international companies” (my translation).

While not all were in accordance with the strike, many groups spoke out in Cusco. Of what I witnessed, protests were generally peaceful, with a massive number of police keeping watch throughout the city. In addition to unions marching through the streets, a large collection of posters and pictures lined the stone wall of one of the main buildings along the Plaza de Armas. I heard both that law faculty from a university had posted the information as well as local writers. There were also large sheets of blank paper taped to the wall on which the public was encouraged to write their opinions on topics ranging from the privatization of water to Alan García’s relationship with the United States. While I have read that the strike was not as widespread as some had hoped, I understand that it is probably not the last that we will see.

To see more photos of this day, visit flickr.

Quechua Studies in Cusco, Peru

2009-07-08T16:20:00.000-05:00

Hello from Cusco. Along with three other classmates from New York, I am here to study the Quechua language at Centro Tinku, a language school that is about a 5-minute walk from the Plaza de Armas. In addition to this intensive program, I am also planning to research photography in Peru for my master’s project. My intention is to explore the many ways that photography may be used in and around Calca, a small town about an hour drive outside of Cusco in the Sacred Valley.

While all four of us from NYU passed the evaluation into the intermediate level, all 10 of us in the class have had a different experience in learning the language. Even though our professor in New York is a native speaker from Cusco, it is incredibly challenging to attempt to converse with Quechua speakers outside of a classroom setting. One of the benefits of studying Quechua in Cusco is the countless opportunities we have to practice. Participating in a homestay, I have the advantage of chatting with my Señora in Quechua over a mate de coca or while learning a new recipe. Quechua speaking taxi drivers, waiters and sellers in the market have generally seemed willing to see how this gringa fares: I would say that I know that I have a lot of learning ahead of me, and I’m excited to have so many chances to actually use the language on a daily basis.

We are now in our second week of classes, and I finally feel like I may have a grip on being here. The first week was intense, to say the least: adjusting to life with a family as part of a homestay, battling stomach complications due to new food and bacteria, fighting off colds and the flu during these frigid winter nights, trying to wrap my head around a new language. I had hoped to be able to start research in Calca almost immediately, but I see that I needed this week to get settled. In addition to the challenges listed above, Peru is also in a time of political discontentment...more on this soon.

part 2: pascua-lama, the debated mining project

2008-04-23T23:02:00.007-05:00

It’s rumored that certain trusty canine friends are “good as gold.” An honest and generous person might be said to have a “heart of gold,” something for which Neil Young has been mining for decades. A yearning for a pot of gold lies under the arc of every rainbow, the gold medal is clearly the most prestigious, and if you are an outstanding and productive person you may be deemed worth your weight in gold.

In its scarcity, the shiny metal has garnered the reputation of having great worth, and for thousands of years has been cherished for the beauty societies have given it. The extraction of the metal and subsequent use of it has played crucial roles in many civilizations as leaders have struggled for power, wealth and beauty. The war over gold today, even in light of the countless other precious objects over which we fight, is still ravaging the land in which it rests and the people who live and work on it.

Gold mines have periodically intrigued me for a couple of reasons. My grandmother told us how two of my ancestors, a father and a son, came from an economically depressed Slovenia to the United States around the turn of the 20th century to work in the gold mines of Colorado. The father died in an accident, and the son moved to Chicago to stay. I always thought it was just a story, but after meeting the descendants of the family they left behind in Europe I learned it was true. Strange memories of an elementary school musical will occasionally drop themselves in my lap, the rhyming lyrics about the Yukon Valley in Alaska which made the gold rush era seem like a sentimental fantasy. But while I personally have never nurtured an interest to wear the precious metal, I also had never had a particular aversion to it until I heard about the No Dirty Gold campaign.

No Dirty Gold is a campaign to demand change by “calling on retailers to identify and disclose the source of the gold they sell-and to ensure that jewelry, watches, cell phones, computer chips, and other products do not contain gold mined at the expense of communities, workers and the environment. Currently, retailers and consumers do not have an alternative to dirty gold.”

The campaign states that:
The production of one gold ring generates 20 tons of wastes.
More than half of all gold comes from indigenous peoples' lands.
80 percent of all gold is used to make jewelry.

The good news is that the campaign exists, that it is making headway, and that media attention has been drawn to the issue. The troubling news is that it hasn’t had enough media coverage, that not enough headway has been made, and that gigantic mining corporations are still excavating with poor practice around the world.

Barrick Gold is the largest gold mining company in the world. They recently celebrated their 25th anniversary, and their slogan is “Responsible Mining.” With headquarters in Toronto, this Canadian company is mining at 27 locations and has 10 development projects; some of the locations include Papua New Guinea, the United States, Canada, Australia, Peru, Chile, Russia, South Africa, Argentina and Tanzania. They are also exploring on 100 sites across 16 countries. On their website, they boast about their corporate responsibility. They contend that they work in support with local citizens, and imply that they have the community’s best interest at heart.

One of their projects, Pascua-Lama, is located on the border of Chile and Argentina. I traveled to the area twice to learn more about it from the perspective of the local community, and discovered many contradictions between what Barrick says and what local Chileans think.

The Huasco Valley is a narrow alley through steep and jagged Andes Mountains. A river cuts through the center, and flows all the way from the glaciers housed on the Pascua-Lama mountain to the Pacific Ocean, providing the only natural source of water for the valley. Located in the Atacama region, named after the direst desert in the world, these glaciers defy science in their existence, and are already suffering severe damage from climate change and the explorations for the proposed mine. Dry, rocky terrain juts up to the fertile vegetation made possible by the river: this is a farming valley. It is also a valley of economic depression, with the worst unemployment rates in the country.

In an attempt to understand the predicament more personally, we met with activists and with families, we stayed with them in one of the towns along the river, Chingüinto, and we attended a weekly community meeting on the battle between the people of the Huasco Valley and Barrick Gold. What we learned needs to go beyond the rugged walls of the valley. Even though so much has been written and published about the destruction of land and communities by mining, how can a small community face up to the likes of the abominable Barrick Gold?

To be continued…

See photos from the Huasco Valley
Read Part 1: Pascua-Lama
Read more about the No Dirty Gold campaign

OJOS nuevos to begin workshops in Chicago

2008-03-15T23:04:00.003-05:00

OJOS nuevos began in Santiago de Chile in the fall of 2006. While the workshops still continue in the southern hemisphere, we are about to expand to include a new location: Chicago.

Planning for a May start, workshops will be offered to a small group of adolescent women in collaboration with La Casa Central Community Center which is in Chicago's Humboldt Park neighborhood. Stay tuned for updates!

the weight of wealth: Potosí, Bolivia

2008-02-16T00:44:00.020-06:00

Potosí had captured my attention before I began planning the trip through the north of Chile, Bolivia, and into Peru — but I had never heard of the city before I moved to Chile. Then I began to hear stories of the mines in Cerro Rico from an Italian photographer friend. A Chilean executive businessman described to me the influence of Bolivian mined silver on the European economy of the 16th to 18th centuries. Because of my interest in the mining industry and the intriguing historical accounts of this towering city, I felt compelled to visit.

The bus ride from Uyuni to Potosí is ordinarily about six hours long. My friend Lena and I decided to make this journey during the day, as we weren´t sure about the quality of roads and buses. It was June of 2007, and an incredible heat saturated the air that fell in direct sunlight; a remarkable difference in temperature waited in every angled shadow, and at night, especially in buildings without heat, the Andean chill proved most persistent. My seat on the bus collected full sun, and a decision had to be made between opening the window and filling the bus with dusty air from the arid countryside or dealing with the crowded heat. Unfortunately I had to use the restroom so badly (a result of the scarcity of bathrooms) that the decision seemed too trite to deal with, and I simply did whatever the Bolivian in front of me chose to do.

I believe that was the first time in my life that I rejoiced at the announcement of a flat tire, something that seemed to be taken in stride as a rather common event for our fellow passengers. We filed out of the bus, many of us looking for an obliging rock on which to lean. An abandoned house made of mud or clay bricks sat on the banks of a trickling river, and many passengers wandered down to take a drink. A flock of sheep bleated at us as they wandered by, monitored by a woman in a gathered skirt and a cap. A team of passengers assisted the driver with the tire and we continued.

The bus stopped for a second time at a small family run restaurant situated in the middle of a dry field dotted with tufts of yellow prickly plants. A couple of pigs wandered around, licking clean a collection of discarded bones. All along the drive we had seen individual houses, like the one with the restaurant, spotting the vast land. They were made of bricks the same color as the dirt blowing in the air and coating your skin, the same color as the earth that seemed to be pulled taut and stretching out forever, the same color as the low hills rising around us on all sides. The bus traveled up and down, but always more up, on a constant climb towards the highest city in the world. See photos here

Lena and I befriended an Argentinian traveling through some of our same cities, and, in need of a hostel, he followed us to ours. The trek might not have been so arduous had we not been with our heavy clothing in the mid-afternoon sun, packed with our backpacks and walking up steep hills in a city of 4,090 meters above sea level—about 13,419 feet. Potosí is much larger and condensed than Uyuni: Germán, our guide from the 4x4 tour, had told us that about 7-8,000 people live in Uyuni, and current population estimates for Potosí are about 125,000. We dropped off our backpacks and several layers of clothes, and began walking the streets.

While we spent a good deal of time wandering — buying fresh juice from stands in the street, oranges from the central market, submarinos from a little café, flat breads from sidewalk vendors (and unfortunately for my stomach, some street cheese) — a top priority for me was to visit the infamous mines that weave through the mountain looking over the city. Cerro Rico literally means “Rich Hill,” but it has a much more complicated significance to regional and world history. It is said that the Spanish gave the mountain this name once they discovered the astounding silver deposits it guarded, but the local indigenous people had already known about the mountain’s content. The root of the name Potosí is still debated by some, as it could have roots in Quechua or Aymaran, the two most prominent indigenous languages of the central Andes area.

The next morning Lena and I rose early and headed toward La Casa Nacional de Moneda, where a large painted mask smiles effusively (and a bit unnervingly) over the courtyard just inside the entryway of the old expansive building. This building is the second mint constructed in Potosí, by order of the Spanish crown. The original mint lasted 192 years, from 1575 to 1767, during the peak of silver extraction from Cerro Rico. The coins created during this period were circulated throughout the world and at one point symbolized riqueza, poder y gloria – wealth, power and glory.

Records say that 45,000 tons of silver were extracted from the mines at Potosí from 1556 to 1783. The silver was shipped to Spain, but most of it didn’t stay there. The surge in wealth helped the king pay off large debts. New connections between continents and countries forged and the silver taken from Potosí and other Latin American locations flowed through trade routes and across borders. The European economy saw dramatic changes in the definition of wealth, and inflation spiked. The value of silver plummeted to a dramatic low, and Europeans began to desire — and buy — luxuries which they imported from around the globe.

Slave trade also increased, and Africans were shipped to work in the mines as well. The altitude proved fatal, however, and the local indigenous were forced to work the belly of the mountain for Spain. Many sources estimate that 8 million miners died during the most productive years of the mines at Potosí, but our tour guide encouraged us to remember that the number is most likely much higher.

After choosing our tour guide company, of which there are several, Lena and I suited up in plastic orange outfits, attached our lamps onto our hardhats, and drove with our guide up to the Miner’s Market, El Mercado de los Mineros. Here we purchased 2 liter bottles of orange or cola flavored pop and large bags of coca leaves for the miners we would encounter while walking through the shafts underground. We drove high up one side of the mountain to a mine entrance that still had blood spattered above it: about a week ago there had been the annual sacrifice of a llama, asking for the safety and productivity of the miners.

Shortly after entering the opaque darkness of the mine, we met with whom is now called Tío, one of the statues representing the god of the world underground for the miners who work in it. Every day they begin with a ceremony to Tío, a name the Spanish mistakenly took for their word “uncle.” We were told that it comes from a word in Quechua for god, because although the Spanish said that it was the devil, for the indigenous it was not so negative. Our guide told us that just as there is a god for the world above ground who protects and guides people, there is a god for the world underground; in following, the miners ask for protection and prosperity every day.

Unfortunately, even though the mine is now a collective, and miners can keep their earnings for themselves, it is terribly risky and difficult work. Shafts that have been closed for decades will be discovered, and the desperate will weave their way through dangerous tunnels looking for minerals. The hope for striking it big drives many impoverished into the mines, including children. Many live in makeshift dwellings around the mountainside, hoping for a better turnout. Illness and disease often follow the years spent inside the mine, after exposure to toxic materials. Although we met many who have said they have benefited from working in the mine, it is not questionable that what they have endured inside it has not been humane.

Walking out into the sunlight at the end of the mineshaft surprised me with its starkness. Exhausted from a few hours of crawling and bending and climbing, I wondered how the miners subsist an entire day on the large wad of coca leaves packed in their cheeks, even if it does mask their hunger. We stumbled back to our hostel, took showers during the hours that the water heater could be used, and spent the rest of the day meandering, chewing on our tourist view of one of the most infamous mines of the new world.

Zequi had decided to extend his stay in Potosí and explore a nearby town and some hot springs in the mountains, daytrips that are advertised in pamphlets at the hostels and tour guide offices; Lena and I decided to stop next in Sucre, slipping the city into our agenda last minute. We met for dinner the night before we left, and toasted to the crossing of paths in the highest city in the world.

See photos from Potosí here.

benet academy hosts camera drive

2008-01-16T20:43:00.000-06:00

Recycling Cameras for Chile, the latest OJOS nuevos campaign, asks for the digital cameras that have been replaced by shiny new ones during this recent holiday season. In an effort to redistribute resources to where they can be better utilized-- other than that dusty shelf on the computer desk or shoved in the back of a drawer nestled in knotted cords-- this campaign will send donated digital cameras to OJOS nuevos, a photography program for youth at social risk in Santiago de Chile.

Benet Academy, a high school in Lisle, Illinois (and my alma mater), is currently hosting a camera drive to collect digital cameras for the campaign. A series of posters have been hung through the school hallways explaining the mission of OJOS nuevos and encouraging students to ask their families and friends for any unwanted cameras, and announcements are read daily over the loudspeaker. The drive officially began on January 7, with plans to wrap up on this coming Friday the 18th.

This morning I received notice from the assistant dean of students that nine cameras had already been brought into the office, a pleasant surprise; I had originally set the goal for ten total. Around lunch I opened another message saying that three more had been brought in. I also found out that a Spanish teacher is having a fundraiser in his class to raise money to buy a new camera.

Benet would like to extend the camera drive until the end of the month, and of course I have no objection. The generosity has overwhelmed me and already exceeded my optimistic expectations. Please stay tuned for final results!

recycling cameras for chile

2007-12-06T08:52:00.001-06:00

With the holiday season here, lots of you are looking for the perfect gift to give. Sale advertisements are bombarding you in the newspaper and the mail, and every toy, gadget and oddity is waiting to pounce into your shopping cart. And what will you be receiving from your friends and loved ones?? A new iPod, a watch, a web cam, maybe a Wii, if you're good...

A new campaign is spreading its wings this December: Recycling Cameras for Chile. The goal of this campaign is to send 15 new or used digital cameras down to the OJOS nuevos photography program in Santiago for kids at social risk.

Voluntarios de la Esperanza, or VE, is a non-profit organization that brings volunteers from around the world to Santiago de Chile to create educational, recreational, cultural and social programs for children who have been abandoned or abused and thus live in shelters. VE works at 14 children's institutions, helping over 1000 kids. OJOS nuevos is proud to mark its first full year as a program with VEGlobal. OJOS nuevos is currently in only one shelter, but with new volunteers arriving every three months, programs are passed along so they continue and grow. It's not human power that's threatening the future of OJOS nuevos: it's the lack of cameras.

OJOS nuevos is a social documentary project that puts cameras in the hand of youth and teaches them to become visual storytellers, capturing what life is like for them in Santiago de Chile. Using digital cameras and computers in the shelters or in local libraries, 16 girls and young women have participated in extensive workshops where they learned the basics of image-making, watched slideshows exposing them to photos from around the world, and learned about the history of the medium. They explored their city and their personal reality, experimenting with journalism and self-expression. In more advanced classes students learned to share their images with the world on blogs and public websites. A fieldtrip to the picturesque coastal city of Valparaíso, two hours away from Santiago, allowed students their first visit to this port and showed them the thrill of discovering a new place through the lens of a camera (see photos here). At the most recent end of the workshop exhibition, over 100 young women, staff members and volunteers celebrated the photography of 10 participants in one of the most prestigious photography institutes in Chile, Instituto ARCOS, located downtown Santiago. After five months of study, this final exhibition allowed these young women a public space to show their work and to tell their own stories from their perspectives (see photos here).

We are counting on you to help continue the momentum of OJOS nuevos in Chile. New and used digital cameras will be collected from now through February. If you see a nice-shiny-new point-and-shoot on sale, we would be honored to accept the donation! Or if you have received a nice-shiny-new digital camera for the holidays, maybe you would like to donate your old one and recycle the same act of giving.

Please contact ojosnuevos.chile[at]gmail.com to arrange a donation, if you have questions or want more information. Included in your donation will be shipping the camera to Chicago, IL, where we can arrange one bulk shipment of the cameras to Chile at our expense. Thank you!

If you would like to purchase a new digital camera for OJOS nuevos, here are some links to help you:
Kodak Cameras
Tiger Direct
Best Buy

OJOS nuevos video sale en español

2007-11-22T22:51:00.000-06:00

OJOS nuevos es un programa en Santiago de Chile que ayuda que los jóvenes de alto riesgo exploren fotografía digital. Lindy Drew y Christine Mladic fundaron este proyecto en asociación con VEGlobal en el año 2006. Más información en español viene pronto. ¡Gracias!

from San Pedro to Uyuni: the smell of raw

2007-10-25T21:02:00.001-05:00

They say that smells carry your memories. Smells are like little turtles, carrying secrets on their backs, secrets of the past, secrets that escape in wafts and whispers. I sit at my desk, and I smell in the dark a wintry London night of 1998, when I was only eighteen, on a senior trip. I can see the hotel room flickering in, the beige carpeted floor, the expansive window opening up screenless to let the night inside. I sit here at my desk in a soft blue bathrobe, fresh from a hot shower, lotioned and scented like a perfume ad: comfortable.

Some smells are bottled or pushed into candle wax, to be released in a room far away from the source of the scent. My eucalyptus lotion used to tell me about its history via its presence: I would not have purchased such an expensive treat for my skin, my old boss had given it to me after rescuing it from his wife’s attempt at tossing the brand new bottle into the garbage. Now the smell of eucalyptus awakens my hunger and spreads an immense calm over my body as I remember my time on Isla Amantaní on Lake Titicaca. Eucalyptus wood is used in the kitchen’s fire, and the smell of it burning will always bring me back to this paradise of an island.

The second chapter of my trip from Chile, through Bolivia and Peru is marked by the journey away from people and into nature, where smells, colors, and landscapes cleaned my senses and offered them something new. Choosing to cross the border on a tour instead of the “death train” or the midnight bus from Calama, my friend Lena and I made a good decision. We signed up in San Pedro for a four day three night tour in a 4x4. With six passengers and a driver, people filled up the jeep, and our food, water, fuel, and personal belongings were stored on the roof. After living in a city of six million people for nearly a year, spending time in crowded neighborhoods and feeling the soot of pollution invade my pores, this thrust into nature delivered a much welcome shock.

We passed the Laguna Verde, spent a night at Laguna Colorado and visited geysers at over 4,000 meters above sea level; the stench of the sulphuric belches of the earth carried on the smoke billowing from craters in the rocks (see large photo above). I had hours and hours for reflection, for daydreaming, for inventing or learning the magic of the land. In an environment completely new to me, I dispelled my ignorance of southwestern Bolivian landscapes, and discovered profound beauty in the dry hills, sandy deserts of stone sculptures, and mineral rich soil. I remember the raw smell of earth and the rainbow colors in the sand, as if in their carefully structured patterns they told not only the story of their past but that of my future. The rare alpacas and llamas we saw provided us with sporadic sparks of entertainment, and I grew quite fond of the small, yellow spike plants. Lena and I, without high tech sleeping bags like the rest of the passengers, cuddled under as many alpaca blankets as we could find but still, as the electricity turned off, could not get warm. Perhaps it was our rather gradual path of altitudinal incline, the morning and nightly doses of coca tea, or just luck, but any hint of altitude sickness completely passed me by. Flamingoes wade in the mineral rich lagoons and lakes, and as we made our way to the salt flats outside Uyuni we stopped to see them, random volcanoes, rock formations, and any other passing item of interest. That afternoon, at the salt hotel, I was the only lucky one whose shower temperature fulfilled my lengthy pleas. The quinoa soup the first night was delicious, but I still remember the quinoa soup at the salt hotel, on the salar’s rim, as totally doing me in. I can still smell it now…

Waking before dawn, I stood on the edge of the salar and felt as if I were standing on the moon. I know I have heard this description before, but of all the times in this trip through the southwest of Bolivia I felt that I was on another planet, the salar wins at convincing me that this was truly the case. The largest salt flat in the world, you can stand in the middle of a white plain and see nothing but white extending around you as far as you can see. As the sun rose, the salt turned from black, to grey, to turquoise, to a glittering white. I kept reaching out to touch it, expecting it to be cold, like the frozen Minnesota lakes of my childhood. The salt played tricks with your mind and with your eyes, giving perspective a new meaning and toying with your silly ideas about distance. Our guide told us that underneath the layers of salt there is still water, the remains of an old salt lake, and we visited Isla Pescado, an island shaped like a fish, made of coral, and home to hundreds of enormous cacti.

While on our journey we had visited a couple of very small towns that look to Uyuni as a kind of central city for the area, it still registered as a very small city to me. Our tour ended in Uyuni, and Lena and I said goodbye to our fellow passengers from the 4x4. I liked Uyuni, to be sure, and I wish that I could spend more time there. All said, I wish I could spend a lot more time in Bolivia as a whole, the country captured me and my curiosity. But unlike in Chile, where a female walks onto the Metro and any male will willingly insist she take his seat, where arms are lent to steer down stairs and doors are held open, I felt a distance between Bolivia and me. I questioned the motives for my photography more than ever, I felt intrusive, and found myself arguing ethics in my head, arguing many things actually, and feeling challenged to come up with satisfying answers. The frigid nights on the altiplano, the same clothes layering on day and night to fight for warmth, dirty hair, scratchy skin, it seems so far away now in this fuzzy bathrobe, with my lotion, with my memories.

See more photographs here.

maestra vida, holding class daily

2007-09-26T12:34:00.001-05:00

Two months have passed since I left Chile. As I settle into what still feels temporary, I try to find replacements for the holes and vacancies that remain. Some things are just too disparate: roaming the streets of the Chicago suburbs can’t replicate Barrio Brasil, communal public spaces here don’t really even try to act like the bench-filled Plazas, and since volunteering here will not be possible for some time, I am working on a giant pile of letters to my girls, the act of which relays their laughs or stories only in my head. The suburbs of Chicago are their own entity, and while I am here to enjoy my family for awhile, living within their boundaries and moving among them I am fascinated by the strange mix of behaviors and find myself doing miniature studies of people and places. The thing about the suburbs (it could happen anywhere, but I am here, so it follows to be my example) is that due to their design, one could become incredibly isolated in a very short amount of time. I remember having discussions in Chile about how some Chileans think people from the United States are too individualistic. I’m not sure at what point being individualistic becomes too, becomes extreme, becomes solitary, but I know that the lifestyle of the suburbs could facilitate this extremity, if one is not careful. Especially if one is unemployed and broke: duly noted. I realized it was time to do something. Time to go out. Where? The only place I could think of on a Thursday night: salsa.

If I could describe downtown Naperville in an un-biased manner, I would. But I don’t think I can. It has good schools to be sure, and a picture perfect river-walk, but many will make the argument that its fairytale appearance tricks some members of its population into forgetting or overlooking problems that need attention: international problems, problems in other areas of our country, and problems even within the same neighborhood. Naperville has changed a lot over the years since I moved there as a junior high school student, including the increase in monetary wealth. But the attitude that I carried with me to Frankie’s Blue Room one recent Thursday night was as positive, determined, and bold as I could muster, an almost desperate attempt to find a niche I could occupy despite my personal history in its realms. I imagined my friends in Chile at the same moment, on a Thursday night, slicking on lip gloss and selecting earrings to go with their strappy shirts and jeans. An hour later in Santiago, they would be taking the metro to Bellavista… perhaps buying a sopaipilla on the way… Downtown Naperville should not be confused with the image in one’s head of “downtown.” Naperville does have a large population, over 140,000, but I think it’s rather family oriented, and its nightlife scene thus may suffer a little. Last year Money Magazine named it the #2 Best Place to Live in the United States. Interesting. I think it depends on what your standards are, where your priorities lie. I’m going to narrow it down to Salsa dancing on a Thursday night.

I think my expectations were a little high. Not a surprise really, since I cannot put a leash on my optimism; but this trait can often be difficult to manage and appropriately curb. At least I can say I tried. I’d rather not remember the music, some kind of soft-salsa, or elevator salsa, none of the blazing trumpet solos and definitely no change in tempo. It was in-the-lines salsa, diet salsa, safe salsa. I sipped on a sprite at the edge of the bar, trying to look welcome, open, nice. Every once in awhile some muffles would rise in volume in response to the american football game blinking from the tvs above the dancefloor. I turned to the waitress to get a water, when the man next to me asked me if that was all that I wanted. Even in my peripheral vision I could see signs that he was older than my father. Yes, please, just water. When I was finally asked to dance by a reserved and polite young man, I walked to the dancefloor with a smile: a good song finally fell upon us. A rush of excitement washed over me and I felt my heart carrying the drums. We began dancing, I swayed through the steps as if I had become liquid, passing forward and back, smiling, letting him lead me around in circles. I closed my eyes and remembered Maestra Vida, Bellavista, the live music, dancing until sunrise….. We stopped suddenly. I stood looking at him, my mouth open, then turned to see the guy next to us pick his glasses up off the floor and look at me as if clearly, since I was the blonde, it had been all my fault. I left shortly afterwards, encouraged by the unwelcome attention of a couple of drunk guys who had stumbled in by mistake and were asking me, 2 inches from my face, their necks thicker than my thighs, to clarify what salsa dancing is. Maybe they would be better off watching the football game.

Naperville has one other salsa dance locale, as far as I know. Wednesday and Saturday nights, Esteban’s opens its dancefloor to salseros, with a live band on Saturdays. This time, I had my mom come with me. I didn’t plan on dancing, I felt just scoping the place out for a night might be a more reasonable way to assess the situation. Sitting on the edge of Naperville in a strip mall, across the street from the more diverse suburb of Aurora, Esteban’s is unassuming from the outside. We arrived just before 9pm to avoid the cover charge, and watched the free salsa lessons from our floor-side table. My skepticism wrapped around me, I watched the dancers slowly arrive. Perhaps the recent flop at Frankie’s tainted my view of Esteban’s, but I left that Saturday night quite impressed with the range of dancers that had showed up. All things considered, I’ll give Esteban’s a thumb up, but just one. The music and dancing seemed miles away from the sad travesty of Thursday night at Frankie’s, but the ambiance still felt closed to me. Maybe I had become spoiled, having visited Maestra Vida so many times, but I feel that a good salsa club is one in which people are dancing. Not sitting around watching, but dancing. If not dancing, then people are tapping their feet in anticipation, because the music is just too good to listen to sitting still. I felt like that night Esteban’s seemed like a closed circuit, with small groups staying within their small groups–which really only made me more determined to break my way into some circle somewhere, and soon. More than anything, I think I miss the sense of community that I felt in Santiago, even amidst its rumors of being, in general, a distrustful society.

Maestra Vida is the oldest salsa club in Santiago. Some people make fun of Briana, a friend of mine, and I when we talk about it, because our obvious glee seems to make us hover in the air and we nearly shake upon entering like an addict might before their hallowed substance. Tiny square wooden stools kneel around tiny square wooden tables which hold a single white pillar candle. Inebriated murals cover the walls, each seeming to change every time you look at it. By 2 or 3 in the morning it’s completely full of people, and I pray that they never expand. You learn to lose control in more controlled turns, everyone dances just a little closer, and you have to beg to rest enough to get a glass of water. Maestra Vida is named after a song by Rubén Blades, a singer originally from Panamá. He filled the vacancy left by singer Héctor Lavoe in Willie Colón’s Orchestra in New York in the 70s. “Maestra” means teacher, and “Vida” means life, reminding us some things we can only learn by living them.

The best salsa night depends on three things: the location, the music, and the people. The destinations are vast, spanning from my living room to clubs in cities around Latin America and the world. Then there’s the music, which any salsero has in bundles. But the people, the right mix of energy and skill and patience and fun, that’s something that you can’t fake, and that you can’t force. You never know when everything will align and move forward until you’re in it, until you’re being whipped around by some mystical force and all you see are colors, all you hear are trumpets and even well after you leave at dawn, your feet are still pattering to the drums. I know I can’t replace it; I don’t want to. But months later, I still find myself searching for something that’s even just similar, a taste of the feast of the past.

OJOS nuevos video released in english

2007-09-11T08:22:00.000-05:00

The english version of the first OJOS nuevos video is here to be released. While a more descriptive, lengthy video is being worked on, it won't be finished for quite some time. Meanwhile, we have this piece which introduces the program and showcases many of the girl's photographs. Enjoy! Spanish version coming soon...

OJOS nuevos is a social documentary project that puts cameras in the hand of youth from the hogares in which Voluntarios de la Esperanza works. Photographers Lindy Drew and Christine Mladic started the projects in order to let the participants explore the creativity, enjoyment, and importance of photography. By letting young women be the photographers, they were able to lose themselves in a rewarding activity and tell their story from their own perspectives, capturing what life is like for them in Santiago de Chile. Using digital cameras and computers in the hogares or in local libraries, 16 girls have participated in workshops, each session lasting about five months. They watched slideshows exposing them to international photography, they learned about the history of photography and about cameras that use film, they learned how to protect and hide their cameras in public (the hard way), and they felt the anticipation of waiting for their pictures to come back from the printer. The grand finale to the workshops was to photograph for a day in Valparaíso, a picturesque coastal city about two hours away from Santiago. Lindy and Christine organized the workshops to include slideshows, assignments, editing, and fieldtrips. Some girls preferred to shoot in their neighborhood, others only found interesting subject matter in new surroundings. Some young women would walk right up to strangers and take their portrait, others focused the camera back on themselves. With so much to document and so much to learn from the process of making pictures, the youth soared with the opportunity. OJOS nuevos was first introduced to Hogar San Francisco de Regis with cameras collected by Christine as private donations. She continued the project at Hogar Aldea María Reina afterwards. Lindy Drew brought OJOS nuevos to Hogar Nuestra Señora de la Paz thanks to a donation from Pentax and the www.TakeGreatPictures.com.

San Pedro de Atacama: tourism has two sides

2007-09-05T16:42:00.000-05:00

After the melancholy of a Santiago submitting itself to the chill of a rainy winter, San Pedro seemed like a perfect first stop. A fellow volunteer and I had planned a near month long trip which would take us through the north of Chile, across the border into Bolivia, and after passing through Lago Titicaca, bring us to Cusco, Peru just in time for the Inti-Raymi festival at the end of June. San Pedro is a 24-hour bus ride north of the country's capital, and is a tiny pueblo in the middle of the Atacama Desert: the driest desert in the world. We enjoyed deep, blue skies, the kind that make you feel like you could see beyond your universe, the kind that evoke that same feeling of awe as the ocean. I've heard these blue skies are a daily occurrence.

As I learn more about South America, I would like to return with the resources to travel off the main tourist routes with a knowledgeable guide, but for my first time through Bolivia and Peru I decided to see what opportunities arose and play things rather safely. I prefer to travel in a manner that interacts with the local community rather than observes it, but this is difficult if you need to keep the pace fairly quick. Unfortunately we felt pressured by time and money during these travels, but I didn't want to think of it as limited; I looked at these weeks rather as an introduction to places and cultures in which I hope to be immersed again, and soon. I do not like feeling like a tourist. This can be very difficult to avoid when you have pale skin and blond hair, and are traveling through Latin America. While I can surprise people with my language skills, locals still know that I am an extranjera. Sometimes tourists are looked down upon, depending on the behavior of previous tourists who may have made a name for themselves, but in San Pedro tourism has given an enormous boost to the local economy. With all of the sites and natural beauty located just around the town, it's no surprise that this oasis in the desert is the perfect base from which to explore.

In comparison to other small towns in Chile, San Pedro is unique in many respects. First, the use of adobe for walls and buildings seems to make its long history more apparent. If you take out the tall tourists with backpacks, I think the town has a sense of being untouched. I remember standing outside the town on a hill, with the vast, infinite desert expanding all around the tree-lined pueblo, and thinking how different the sense of space felt. In Santiago, sometimes the city seems to go on forever, neighborhood after neighborhood. But here, it was the opposite. Around San Pedro, under an unending sun and hidden in intimidating expanses, are geysers, prehistoric ruins, the 3rd largest salt flat in the world, archaeological wonders, and natural rock formations that create intriguing shapes and shadows. We choose to visit the Valley of the Moon and the Valley of Mars. The Valley of Mars cannot support one bacteria of life, and among its choppy rocks and reddish sand NASA practices their robot which is then used on Mars. We spent more time walking through the Valley of the Moon, El Valle de la Luna, and stayed there to watch the sun set. It looks like you have left earth, and are on an entirely different planet.

The actual sunset is not nearly as impressive as the 10 minutes following. Across from the sun, to the east, you can watch the cordillera become literally a rainbow of color. The mountains and clouds reflect the separated light and turn from yellow to red to blue with such an intensity you forget that this is natural. I walked away from the line of tourists and found my own place in the sand to witness the marvels. I imagined what the town and the area had been like when the Spanish built the church in 1745, and even the thousands of years before the Spanish had arrived. Chile, I learned, has been greatly influenced by immigrants from all over the world. With a recognized indigenous population estimated at nearly 7% of the whole country's population, Chile seems to be a sort of complicated mix of cultures. But rather isolated pueblos with such long histories as San Pedro make me wonder how much the local citizens have been able to retain of their heritage. And how much, in the face of the strong wave of tourism that is flowing through its adobe lined streets, will influence its future.

After discussing options of crossing the border into Bolivia with other travelers in our hostal, my friend and I decided to take a four day tour in a four wheel drive jeep. We booked with a local company, and settled in for one last night in San Pedro.

See fotos from San Pedro de Atacama here.

OJOS nuevos: exhibition at ARCOS

2007-08-28T23:32:00.000-05:00

Technically, 10 young women and girls had participated in the second session of OJOS nuevos. But if you stood in the crowd at Instituto ARCOS, watching groups of girls run around from panel to panel of their friend's photos, shoving mini-empanadas into napkins and sloshing Fanta into little plastic cups, if you saw the caravans of cars and a bus that had made the trek into the city center from the south side of Santiago, if you saw the proud care-givers and volunteers sharing conversations and snapping photos of the festivities, you would see that the photo program included many more people than 10.

I had brought OJOS nuevos to an hogar in Santiago's Puente Alto neighborhood: Aldea María Reina. I included four young women, ages 13-17, in a 4 month long workshop. Lindy Drew, a very close personal friend and photographer also working with VE, opened another branch of the program at a second hogar in the same southside neighborhood, where six girls participated; their ages ranged from 9-12. While we ran slightly different curriculums in our workshops, the general idea was always the same: not only to enable the participants to learn about photography and take pictures, but to explore their city and look at their world with a new perspective. This is the reason why the program is calledOJOS nuevos: it means "new eyes."

The exhibition at ARCOS displayed the work by all 10 young women. I had met with Hector Lopez, director of the photography program at ARCOS, several times, and we had discussed the idea of blending the photos into one show and placing them in a larger context that would pull them together instead of hanging photos one by one or dividing them by photographer.After weeks of going through all of the participant's photos, Lindy and I created large collages based on theme. We looked for common visual elements as well as more subtle implications of the images that we could use as a thread to weave the photos into a more cohesive group. The titles we decided on included: Calle/Street, Manos/Hands, Graffiti/Graffiti, La Vida del Hogar/Hogar Life, Soy Yo/It's Me, Retratos/Portraits, Místico/Mystical, El Taller/The Workshop, Repetición/Repetition. In addition to the collages of photos, Lindy and I posted large bilingual explanations of the taller, the hogar, the organization, and our biographies. We hold the hope that one day this photography show will be able to travel outside of Santiago's limits and OJOS nuevos will find more stability as a social project.

I knew that I had learned a lot by running the workshop, but I used to wonder if the girls had learned what I had hoped they would. I remember at the end of my time at the hogar in July, C.M. stood up at the end of the table and overtook her shyness
with a bold, beautiful smile. She began a slow, serious farewell speech for me, at the head of a long table in the administration building of the hogar. Her long black hair, a creative mess of tiny braids and loopy waves, was tied up in knots with clips and rubberbands asymmetrically. Clearing her throat, she addressed the small group that had gathered for my goodbye party. She began: Sometimes we come without motivation, we come with pain and sadness. But even though it may be difficult, we can get past it... In the photography classes I learned that you have to be creative. There are small details that you normally wouldn't see, that you would ignore. But sometimes these things can be so important. I looked down at my orange drink and manjar cake and burned the memory into my brain, knowing that at that moment there was nowhere else I would have rather been.

Someone asked me recently, if I were given all the money I needed to live, what would I do? Without hesitation, I responded: Go back to South America, travel and learn about the cultures there, and continue the photography project OJOS nuevos. Given that money is not often "given" out in lifetime increments, this is much easier said than done. The means are not present to justify this end. One year away seems ok for one year, but beyond that, for me, visits home are crucial. Maybe it was during my workshops or maybe on the long busrides traveling but I realized that I am not as solitary as I once believed, and I thrive on relationships. The desire for new ones has driven me far from home, and the value of old ones has brought me back. Hopefully, OJOS nuevos will continue in the hogares in which we implemented the program. I know even though I will be living in the States, there is no reason it cannot proceed. I am certain I will continue to be a part of OJOS nuevos.

While the cameras and memory cards I used for my workshops were supplied by generous donations from Chicagoans, Lindy Drew used cameras lent by Pentax through TakeGreatPictures. Please visit the website to read articles about the OJOS nuevos program, and see more photos from the exhibition. Go to this page, then just scroll down until you the blurb about us.

You can also visit FLICKR to see photos from OJOS nuevos.

santiago to chicago

2007-08-02T17:25:00.000-05:00

Back where the toilets flush clockwise, where August means sitting on the stoop in the summer heat, and where the colors in the sky at sunset call all of your attention due to lack of mountains or really any topographical variation, I have returned to my home town. Traditionally, I suppose it is my home town, the greater Chicagoland area, although my idea of "home" shifts and changes sometimes. Home could be the feeling of having dinner around a full table of friendly faces, home could be the sensation of a hug from someone you haven't seen in a long time. Home could be a place where you are living and experiencing your daily reality, or home could be of historic importance, where your memories live.

The last couple of months in Chile made it even more clear to me that they will not be my last at all. Chile, South America, are still just developing their roles in my life. With a rush of activities and events at the end of May, including the OJOS nuevos exhibition at ARCOS, I left Santiago in a blur, running to the bus terminal and arriving just in time with a good friend of mine to begin our trip up north, through Bolivia and to Peru. Spanning the month of June, this journey has been extensively documented and will unfold here in a series of essays referencing the notes I scribbled along the way, electricity permitting, and countless photographs. But in regards to my time in Santiago, most importantly, my connection with the foundations and people with whom I worked are still intact, and I look forward to continuing these relationships. I won't always know exactly how much I meant to the people I met, the girls, my friends; I know that with some, we shared a mutual understanding about the power of our friendship. Without a doubt, my year in Chile will not be forgotten, nor will it remain untouched, tucked in a frame on the wall in some obscure, private room. In the most humble sense, I have been changed, and it was change that I was seeking. Hopefully this change has gone beyond me. Without a doubt, my attitude and perspective has shifted. The force of my experiences has picked me up out of the rut in which I found myself one year ago, and I feel that I have embarked on a different, much more satisfying-- albeit challenging-- path: I am so glad that I went.

OJOS nuevos: second exhibition announced

2007-05-22T00:22:00.000-05:00

Photography Exhibition
featuring the work of ten young women from Hogar Aldea María Reina and Hogar Nuestra Señora de la Paz of Puente Alto, Santiago de Chile.

The opening will take place this Thursday, May 24th, at 6.30pm, in the Instituto Profesional ARCOS, a prestigious visual arts institute near Plaza de Armas in Santiago's center.

All participants will be in attendance! Many more girls and young women will be present to share in the opening festivities. If you are in Santiago or know someone who is, please spread the word, and stay tuned for postings of their work.
Congratulations to all ten participants and the many other girls who have been able to enjoy the cameras.

OJOS nuevos: viaje al valparaíso

2007-05-18T23:48:00.000-05:00

After plastic cups of chocolate milk, marraqueta bread with butter, and a short nap, four teenage girls, the subdirector of the hogar, two extra volunteers and I filed off the bus at the terminal in Valparaíso. Full of anticipation, none of the four young women had ever visited the city before; this would also be the first time our taller had ever left the Santiago city limits. I had passed out the cameras on the bus so the girls could document the two hour ride, and as we left the terminal to the east of the city everyone was smiling and chatting with excitement. Briefly explaining the purported reputation of Valparaíso as being unique in its beauty but dangerous in its layout– tiny, winding streets ideal for quick robberies– the girls tucked their cameras safely out of sight and grabbed each otheŕs arms as we headed towards the center.

I didn’t even see it happen, really. We were waiting at a stoplight, and as I turned around to join the conversation a man ran into the center of our group, bumping into a few girls and then took off running. Still close to the bustling crowds around the bus terminal, he blended in and we lost him quickly as he darted between trucks, cars and street vendors. One fo my girls looked down to see the camera strap around her neck dangling empty, and I became instantly filled with rage at the implications of the episode. Besides the fact that we only have a limited number of cameras and resources, the camera could potentially be replaced. But this particular girl sometimes has difficulty feeling motivated to participate in group activities. Now she felt irresponsible, she felt she was to blame, and she didn’t think she wanted to take pictures that day; of all the people to rob, I wish it wouldn’t have been her.

The best thing for us to do was to forget about the camera. There was nothing we could do but continue with our day and hoping she would change her mind, I explained that we could all share cameras and take turns with the video camera I had brought as well. We quickly moved on. Even though the late morning dulled the city with gloomy clouds and a brisk chill, the newness of the city brought everyone’s spirits up. But even in just the first plaza we crossed, the girls shuffled around exploring every detail in the tiled patterns in the ground, the carved women of the fountain, the people sitting on the benches with the morning newspaper or with their kids.

Valparaíso is a coastal city with a historically important port. In the late 19th century, ships traveling between the Atlantic and the Pacific, through the Strait of Magellan, would stop in Valparaíso, which is one of the reasons for its international influences and cultural vitality which it still retains to this day. The city rolls over hills and tucks into corners, a series of acensores assisting with the steep inclines. We spent the first part of our day strolling through the city over to the port, and during this walk the clouds completely broke and we arrived at the ocean with the sun. The ships mesmerized the girls, we sat on the cement steps and watched the waves bounce the smaller boats around like toys.

After the port, we decided to climb one of the hills; it was much more my decision than anyone else’s, and I definitely had to do a lot of encouraging to get us all the way to the top. The panorama of the bay spread out before us with saturated colors and deep shadows. Sidewalks and pathways wound around sharp corners and stopped and started whenever they felt like it. The graffiti along the way intrigued everyone– we definitely have our fair share of graffiti in Santiago, but here there were also many murals and more artistic designs and scenes. With everything new and interesting before them, they took pictures constantly. We had to have stopped every 5 meters as someone found some detail or reflection of interest. I tried very much to encourage more portraiture, but only the oldest participant really ever found the courage to stick her camera right into the faces of strangers and capture them for just a moment.

We took an acensor down, and even though there are drastic differences between these teenage girls and the ones from my past in the Chicago suburbs, there are still many similarities. The old, rickity wooden elevator jerked into motion and set off a series of high pitched squeals that kept me laughing the whole way down. The ride was definitely worth the $2.80 investment. With an hour to spare before we needed to catch the bus home, we found an amusement park set up in another plaza. Before I knew it, a highly competitive game of foosball had erupted and had all of my girls and the volunteers playing and jumping around. We watched little kids waving to their moms and dads from plastic horses riding in circles, and I wondered if these girls had ever been able to do that before. When they caught sight of the swings, these teenagers, with their black sweatshirts and matching fingernails, with their eyeliner and tough attitudes, revealed that they’re still kids. They swung with smiles on their faces, they swung in all seriousness, watching something I couldn’t see, beyond the plaza, beyond the hills. We took turns pushing them, I took their photos as they flew past.

By the time we looked at the clock we had to sprint all the way back to the bus terminal. Gasping for breath we settled into our seats and fell asleep as the sun set outside the giant windows of the bus. If you ask me if the trip was a success I would ask you how you measure success. Did they take amazing photos? Incidentally, they did. Did a camera get stolen? Unfortunately yes, but later in the day this young woman did decide to take photos, when she regained some confidence, and so we don’t even mention the camera. Everyone was safe. We shared jokes, our photography, the pain of walking uphill forever, and hard-boiled eggs. For me, I know without a doubt that it was a success, that the girls had an opportunity that they wouldn’t have had otherwise.

Please visit flickr to see our photographs from this trip.

Part 1: pascua-lama, the debated mining project

2007-05-02T23:56:00.001-05:00

Barrick Gold is a mining company from Canada who has mines all over the world: North America, South America, Africa, and in Australia and the Pacific. One possible mining project in the north of Chile, seven years after being proposed but still waiting to break ground, is the controversial project Pascua-Lama.

Pascua-Lama is a mountain that sits on the border of Chile and Argentina- Pascua being the name on the Chilean side, Lama being the Argentinian name. In the middle of the driest region in Chile, Pascua-Lama's glaciers are a critical source of natural water for the whole Huasco Valley. These glaciers create the Huasco river which runs across the width of the country to the Pacific Ocean. The mountain contains large deposits of gold, silver, and copper, which will be mined over the estimated period of time of 20 years. A highly debated project, those in favor say that Barrick will bring jobs to the Huasco Valley which suffers from staggering unemployment. Those against the project argue that the damage to nearby glaciers and environmental contamination do not justify the promised jobs and question whether the people of the Huasco Valley even have the skills to be accepted as workers with the company.

Mining has long been the driving force behind Chile's economy. Companies from around the world have been involved in the mining scene on varying levels. Chile's mineral deposits have been the source of profit and destruction for hundreds of years, and the politics of mines, the rights of companies and those of miners have continually been debated. Pascua-Lama has technically been approved by the Chilean government, and some-- like the Barrick website-- may argue that is has also been accepted by the inhabitants of the Huasco Valley. Upon my recent return from a second trip into the Huasco Valley, I will begin to dissect what my team and I are learning about the project and about the mining industry.

When I first read about the Pascua-Lama project, I had already been in Chile for 4 months. An article appeared on the BBC World News website debating some of the key issues at hand such as contamination and unemployment. As I began to read articles online severely criticizing Barrick Gold and viciously condemning the Pascua-Lama project as an environmental disaster, I decided to plan a trip to the valley to speak directly with the people there and see if the 94% of the farmers and water users who Barrick says voted in favor of the project truly embrace it. What we discovered is a complicated fight that involves multiple countries and their governments, a cast of powerful individuals who are so invested in the project you have to wonder why, an agricultural valley with a history that dates back before the Incas, and a mountain of gold that has this huge corporation willing to do anything to move forward with their plans. Some say that Chile, still referenced as a developing country, needs this mine and needs the jobs. Some may argue that this is the way the world works, and if not Barrick, then another corporation will move in and do the same. Others favor the valley, the environment, and those who have been living for centuries working the land. With the project approved but stuck on a legal debate, many in the valley still have hope that they can stop it. For both sides, each day is crucial.

OJOS: part of a larger picture

2007-04-15T12:09:00.000-05:00

OJOS nuevos is not an isolated project, but shares the similar vision of a larger movement of social photography projects aiming to provide increased opportunity to marginalized or frequently overlooked members of society. I believe developing and supporting these programs is important not only for the real benefits of the students involved – be they children, teenagers, or adults – but also for our global society, for photography and art, for the inclusion of stories and perspectives in the broader scope of culture and history that might otherwise not have been given space. In addition to the personal growth of the participants of these programs– stronger self esteem, confidence in self-expression, a deeper understanding of their community and a new perspective on their society– educational opportunities or scholarship may also become available further increasing the common goal of breaking the cycle of poverty and helping to enable these participants to change the course of their lives.

In 1991 photographer Nancy McGirr founded FotoKids as Out of the Dump having started the program with six kids living and working in Guatamala City’s garbage dump. Now, some 16 years later, the program reaches out into six different communities and has added many other classes to the original documentary photography workshops. Supporting the participants with educational scholarships helps the children have access to a better future. Visit the site.

Kids with Cameras, a project initiated first in Calcutta’s red light district by photographer Zana Briski in the year 2000, might currently be the most well-known program of its kind due to the moving documentary Born into Brothels. A New York based photographer spending months at a time living among the prostitutes in this district, Zana befriended some children who lived there as well and began to teach them photography. An incredibly successful project on many levels, including a safe home and educational opportunities, Kids with Cameras continues to improve the lives of children now in multiple countries. Visit the site.

In the year 2001 photographer David Jiranek, inspired by Imbabazi Orphanage founder Rosamond Carr, began workshops in Rwanda with the orphans of the 1994 genocide. The children photographed for themselves, to learn about their country and to document its rebuilding. Now the project, Through the Eyes of Children, has grown, exhibitions are touring and all proceeds benefit the education of the children involved. Visit the site.

Other interesting projects include:
BRIDGES to Understanding, The Home Alone Project.
Please share any other similar programs you may know about.

curicó, molina, and some teacups

2007-03-25T15:24:00.000-05:00

Just like when you make a new acquaintance and then suddenly bump into them repeatedly on the street, or when you learn a word in a new language and realize that everyone has been saying it to you everyday, once I had decided to come to Chile but was still in Chicago, I began noticing it all around me. The wine at the dinner table came from vineyards in the long skinny country, travel channels decided to focus on this slice of South America, and before biting into plums, peaches, and many other fruits I would first have to remove the tiny round sticker bearing the name “Chile.” It isn’t too much of a surprise to see food imported to Chicago from around the world; personally I don’t know of many fruits or wines native the mid-western city, and we have to get them from somewhere. But still, when I’m munching on Italian almonds or sipping tea from Japan, I can’t say that I really know from where my food came. Who picked this plum? What course did this loose tea take to get here? I don’t have the answers.

Recently I traveled to Curicó, a small town about 2 and a half hours south of Santiago. It’s not in the mountains, it’s not on the ocean. Nearly everyone – including many Chileans – followed my announcement of my trip with “Why?” Why would I go to Curicó? True, my guidebook of Chile didn’t say much about it at all, but there was something about it that seemed like the opposite of Santiago. This is what appealed to me most, coupled with the strong desire I felt to hike to a waterfall. The national park surrounding Siete Tazas, outside of Curicó, would satisfy this urge.

I didn’t do much in Curicó, which was exactly the point. I went with a good friend of mine visiting from the States, and we aimed to trade the busy, crowded, smoggy expanse of Santiago for the quiet of a small town and the cleanliness of the countryside. To get to Siete Tazas (Seven Teacups), a series of seven pools of water feeding into to one another with small waterfalls, one first needs to take the micro (bus) to Molina, an even smaller town about 20 minutes away. From Molina, buses leave every couple of hours for the national reserve, and the ride is a full two and a half hours. My guidebook only briefly mentioned this natural beauty, and those who don’t know much about it wonder if it’s worth the traveling. I would argue not only in favor of the Siete Tazas, but also for whole beautiful area surrounding. The Río Claro, crisp and clear, plunges out of the sides of mountains creating waterfalls Velo de la Novia and El Salto de La Leona. Unfortunately we didn’t bring our camping equipment, but hiking down to the river, the mist billowing deep in your lungs, the moisture softly collecting on your face, I felt the journey more than justified itself.

The following day we decided to explore the surrounding area of Molina. Having ridden the bus to and from Curicó the day before, through the vineyards and orchards stretching over the land like a giant blanket until the Andes in the distance, alongside rows of terracotta roofed homes, and past the gigantic buildings labeled Dole and Del Monte, I wanted simply to take a walk and explore. We didn’t take any formal tour of a vineyard, rather hopped off the bus and spent the afternoon on foot saying hello to those in the shade of their porches, to the kids splashing in the river, to the street dogs tagging along for company. While we did buy a bottle of wine labeled the Valle of Curicó, I have come to learn that Chile is responsible for the majority of exported table grapes in the world. Fresh fruit currently their third largest export, Chile sends over $1 billion US dollars to the United States every year.

Walking through Curicó, we met Paulina and chatted while she wove a trenza into my hair. With her own stall full of earrings, woven purses, scarves and crafts, she explained that space for artisans to sell their work is increasingly hard to come by in the town. The physical area on the sidewalk is decided by and rented from the municipality which is becoming less every year. During the summer she spends the weekends braiding trenzas on the beach, and during the winter she travels north to visit family. Further down on the same street, we stayed in Hotel Prat, a bed and breakfast type hostel which had recently changed management and thus been completely repainted and redecorated with lime greens, brilliant yellows and bright oranges. After using the kitchen to cook our own dinner, papas fritas with ají and pizza from a corner restaurant sufficing for lunch, we took a walk down to the plaza and shared in the intensity of the late night chess games under the streetlights.

Visit photos from Curicó, Molina, and National Reserve Radal Siete Tazas.
Informational links for Chile’s exports and Curicó Valley

donations push OJOS forward

2007-03-16T12:12:00.000-05:00

After moving out of the community center where I had spent the hottest months of the summer, I find myself without internet in my home for the first time in a very long time. I've relied on my computer for the news, for communication, and for entertainment for awhile, but I never really realized how many minutes a day I spend on the internet. And now not only do I have to count them, I have to pay for each one of them. Living in the city center is decidedly different than living in La Granja: the peaches and the bread cost more, but I can leave my house at night. Both neighborhoods have their advantages and disadvantages. In La Granja, I felt a much stronger sense of community from the beginning. Neighbors watching out for each other, chatting on the sidewalk, selling papas fritas and completos on weekend nights outside their homes. In Barrio Brasil I haven't met a single neighbor, but I can walk to museums, parks, plazas, cute cafes that I don't buy coffee in, and internet cafes. Because of the way public transportation works in Santiago, even though I live much farther from the Aldea-- the hogar where I have OJOS nuevos now-- than where I lived over the summer, it takes me the same amount of time to commute for the taller. Nearly approaching the end of this workshop, we have many reasons to celebrate.

I would like to extend an enormous thank you to a donor from Chicago who recently sent 5 brand new memory cards for our girls' cameras! Until now we were working with memory cards of 32, 16, 8, and even 4 megabytes. Each of the new memory cards is 512 MB which means that we can leave the hogar for much longer periods of time-- and in the future, perhaps even leave the city. This will significantly impact the possibilities of the taller not only for these girls, as their taller wraps up, but for the talleres to come. We all send a gigantic thank you to Chicago!!

The girls continue taking pictures around the neighborhood and beyond. We've made photo collages from old National Geographics I found in the market, we've returned to the Puente Alto library to look at our pictures and edit them in Photoshop. The schoolyear has started, and this will make leaving the hogar during the week a little difficult, but with only a limited amount of time left in the taller, we can work around the school schedule. This past Wednesday, in an effort to show the girls the difference between street photography and studio portrait photography, our class took a fieldtrip to a local mall where we had our old-fashioned portraits taken. We talked about film versus digital cameras, and they witnessed the long preparation that proceeds a studio produced photograph. Top hats, lacy dresses, elbow length gloves, the girls had a great time being in front of them camera instead of behind it. (photos sure to follow)

OJOS takes to the streets

2007-02-18T12:27:00.000-06:00

Leaving the hogar with our photography taller serves two purposes: first, it makes the girl's photography more exciting. On the move in this big city keeps new people and events always in front of their lenses, and they have a million chances to try new techniques and ideas, to overcome fears of pressing the shutter in public or photographing people they don't know. Second, it gives the girls an opportunity to leave the hogar. Like most teenagers, these young women want to be independent, they want to go out, meet people, talk to each other, and not necessarily always be with an adult. Have a 26-year-old ask them if they want to leave the hogar for a few hours to go to the city center (or even the library) armed with their own digital camera, and you will have nearly every inhabitant of the hogar asking where they can sign up. Our excursions, for the most part, are a big hit with the four girls in the taller, and I enjoy taking them out; the responsibility of four young lives always makes me a little nervous, but it's telling the other dozens of young women that I can't also include them that complicates the process even more. There is always the underlying fear that something will happen to one of the girls, especially with the risk of flashing four shiny digital cameras around in public which just begs for attention.

Taking advantage of the fact that the girls have been on summer vacation, we have been leaving the hogar nearly twice a week. Our first excursion was to Santa Lucia, a hill decorated with beautiful staircases and fountains from which one can view the wide expanse of the city. Over an hour away in metro from the hogar, we had just over an hour at the hill which is right in the city center. I waited to pass out the cameras until we arrived just to make sure the girls wouldn't use all of the memory on their cards before we got there. We climbed nearly to the top before we had to trek back down, and each girl seemed to find her own pace along the way-- making it a little difficult to manage with a ratio of two volunteers to four girls. I almost wish we had four volunteers, one for each student, but still we're learning how to move as a group while allowing enough freedom for the girls to be creative. I think in the debate of what age levels benefit more from this particular taller, the type and amount of supervision are important factors to consider.

We've been to the Puente Alto library three times now, and they have even been so nice as to cover some small black and white printing costs for us. Because of the varying levels of computer knowledge, the instructions in Photoshop also tend to vary student to student. I end up walking down the line of computers helping each girl individually, trying to get them on more of the same level before giving directions to the group as a whole. I have started making small instruction guides in spanish with visual aids so that when they are a little more comfortable with the program they will be able to continue to discover new concepts on their own.

As a group, we sit down after each excursion and look at the most recent photographs. What the girls decide to photograph, and how they capture the image, never ceases to intrigue me. Some are more timid to speak in front of the group, but as a whole the girls seem very supportive of each other and the risks they take with their photography. I won't deny that a couple of the girls support a very keen interest in trying to collect snapshots of passing male teenagers of whom they think are irresitably rico, but they're usually too shy to follow through anyways. I choose to exercise more positive feedback on what they are doing well, and definitely find their company an unending source of entertainment and challenge. To say that we run around together always as a happy group would be misleading; each day has a different dynamic as we all continue to wade through the inevitable drama in our lives. But I will say that if even one girl has had a fun or interesting time after our taller than it's been successful. As it stands now, on the Chilean grading scale of 7-1, I would give the girls a big juicy 7 for effort.

Photographs above taken by Claudia G, Yanina, Claudia N, and Herna, respectively.

sorry mom: I talked to strangers all day

2007-02-09T08:02:00.000-06:00

Having recently reached the five month mark of my time in Santiago, I've been looking back to see what I've learned so far. Besides mastering the 3-step process of purchasing an item at the pharmacy and how to cut the lawn with a manual grass-cutter, I've also managed to buy a telephone card the other day and successfully follow the automated directions to put more credit on my cellphone-- the first time I've ever been able to accomplish this mammoth task without the help of a Chilean friend. This, coupled with the fact that I just finished my first novel in spanish, gives me hard proof that yes, my spanish is improving.

Armed with this boost of confidence, I decided to talk a walk with my camera yesterday. I've purchased eggs from a tiny egg store on the way to Lider before here in La Granja (Lider is a huge megastore similar to Wal-Mart in more ways than just its obstrusively bright fluorescent lights) and I fell in love with it. A nice little grandma with absolutely no gray hair wears a navy smock with little flowers on it over her clothes and carefully places your eggs in triangular pockets of newspaper which she had folded in anticipation of your visit before you showed up. I thought this might be a good first stop, but on my way there I noticed a house older than most in the neighborhood that boasted about its pan y palta on quaint hand-painted signs. Taking the small detour down the grapevine covered front path, I found myself in a small market in the front room of the house being greeted by whom I soon found out is Marta.

First purchasing a bottle of water, I started talking about the heat (a useful everyday summer-in-Santiago conversation starter) but the conversation quickly moved to discussions about the changing neighborhood and the differences between the city and the campo-- not to imply that the conversation moved quickly: we must have talked for at least 40 minutes. Marta soon called in her viejo, Miguel, who explained that he had purchased the house in the 70s when the surrounding area was used to grow vegetables instead being full of rows of apartment buildings and the sprawling, crowded creature that is Lider. Marta is from Los Andes, in the north, and Miguel is from south of Valdivia but had interesting advice for my upcoming visit to the city: eat seafood, and don't hang out with 17-20 year olds because all they do is party. I left the minimarket with kisses and waves and invitations to please come enjoy a cafecito sometime soon.

The egg store is going to take a little more work than I thought. The abuelita showed extreme opposition to the idea of my bringing my camera out, although we did talk about her children and grandchildren for an extensive amount of time. Surrounded by eggs in her little egg store, I made a solemn promise to myself to win her confidence over, even if I just get a picture of her hands with eggs. I know I'll be back. So I decided to take a ride to the city center to the street around the corner from the hogar in which I lived before Domingo Savio. Having walked down this street, which is the best way to get to any bus or metro from the hogar, about a million times over the span of my stay there, I had met several of the store owners and become intrigued by many others. Alejandro, the owner of the sewing machine store, deserved a visit.

After buying a tea from the counter in the market next door-- Alexandro's market, but he wasn't there at the time-- I joined Alejandro on the little red chairs he keeps on the sidewalk in front of his shop. A tiny store, no wider than a couple of meters, it is completely packed with sewing machines at various stages of repair and disrepair. He explained that he learned how to fix sewing machines back when Singer still had a presence in Chile-- I'm not sure what year, but he is now 75. He's been at this location on Libertad in Barrio Brasil for 15 years, collecting broken sewing machines, fixing them, and then selling them. His hands permanently greased and digging deep in some disemboweled machine, Alejandro and his store captivated me with its piles of strange machanical parts and interesting characters hanging out on the red chairs. Amused by my poking around with my camera in search for little details in his shop, like this crucifix tucked behind the electrical wire right above the hiding place for his beer, Alejandro knows I'll be back.

A few doors down Libertad from the sewing machine shop is a Peluqueria I had always watched, but never entered: I never had a reason. It's a barber shop with maybe two chairs, one tv, maybe one customer being shaved or clipped and a friend of the barber sitting in one of the chairs along the wall. This time the friend and the barber, Mario, were just sitting and watching tv, so I walked in and began introducing myself. The friend left soon after, but I had a nice talk with Mario-- it helped that as of yet the only fútbol game I have been to was a Colo Colo game, which you can see won me a lot of points. Mario has lived in Santiago since he was 6 months old, and has had his Peluqueria at this location for 13 years. He began cutting hair at the age of 16, (now he's in his seveties I think) but still smiles when he talks about how much he loves his job. My favorite part about the barber shop is the mechanical clippers Mario uses-- when I first spotted them I pointed to them, lined up in a row under the mirror, asking in general what they were. Mario replied, "Mis pololas!" Confused as to why he would call his clippers his girlfriends, I looked again at the counter and saw underneath the glass a collage of old pictures of half naked women. I think my confusion was Mario's favorite part about my visit.

Strolling through the center, I wandered over to the Plaza de Armas but couldn't find postcards for my family because the street vendors are still trying to get rid of their photos of the "La Pequeña Gigante" which mesmorized the city a short while ago. I headed towards Alameda to start going home on the metro when I heard the old-fashioned tango music like the kind I play when I'm the last one awake at night. A young couple dressed in black made me stop and think again about how badly I'd like to learn the dance. Angela and her brother Andrés dance every day in one of the pedestrian passages near Plaza de Armas. It turns out you have to apply to the city to be able to perform in this area and only the best are chosen and then assigned a place.

A useful trick to talking with strangers is just to ask them about themselves. Many people like to talk about themselves, they just need some prompting. I'd like to spend even more time with some of these new random acquaintences-- but a good string of introductions certainly makes for an interesting day, a makeshift kind of open-ended scavenger hunt with variable directions and certainly no definite end...

first week of OJOS nuevos at the aldea

2007-02-04T13:54:00.000-06:00

Our first week of OJOS nuevos at the aldea was indeed, as the Chileans would say, "top" Not without its challenges, I would still agree that one, we are off to a promising start, and two, I have a lot of work to do. We have so many more opportunities with this taller, or workshop, that my lesson plans from the last taller are now out of date. Thanks to donations to VE I will be able to purchase a new battery and memory card this weekend, improving two of our cameras and enabling us to leave the hogar as a class to take pictures around the city for the first time. I plan on taking the girls to Santa Lucia, a hill that rises up in the center of Santiago from which one can view the expansive city.

We met twice this past week, the first time on Monday with half the class spent looking at international photography in a slideshow and learning some about the history of photography, and the second half wandering around the hogar taking pictures. At the end of the day we downloaded everyone's first photos and shared them with each other. They liked going off by themselves and showed a lot of initiative in experimenting with their cameras even on the first day. We have some very bold and inventive young women in this group.

Wednesday morning we took the micro down to the Puente Alto (the hogar's neighborhood) library where we will be able to use their computer lab. Lindy helped the staff install Photoshop on six of the computers in the children's library, and we will be able to go as often as once a week to use the internet to explore photography sites and magazines and to use learn how to edit images in Photoshop. While the Aldea will be receiving a computer lab within the next month due to VE's @ccess the future computer program, it is still important to show the girls where the resources are around them and how to use them to their benefit. Each girl will have her own email account as well, and through our email group we can share photos and websites with each other.

As an introductory class, I felt very positive about our first trip to the library. But the gap in computer knowledge among the girls coupled with my lack of spanish vocabulary when talking about Photoshop tricks and techniques showed me that I have a lot more preparation to do before the next time we go to the lab. Another challenge in front of me is that I'm also a new tia for the girls, and still getting to know them as individuals. Which is why one of my favorite parts of the week was after class on Wednesday when I stayed to eat lunch and hang out with the girls. While the Aldea has four houses in which the young women live, during the summer all of the girls who have no alternative place to visit are moved into one of the houses. Lunch had been prepared by a tia and a young woman who likes to cook-- she explained to me the proper way to cook Chilean corn as it is very different from the Midwest corn on the cob to which I am accustomed: this corn, much tougher and on a larger cob than Illinois corn, requires 15 minutes in boiling water, which would explain why the last time I tried to cook it you couldn't even bite into it, it was so undercooked. We ate a corn and potato stew with a side salad of lettuce and tomato with lemon juice, oil, and salt.

For dessert, those who wanted to could have flan, which I happen to love. I sat at a table with three young women, two of which are in the photo class, and learned that they don't like reggaeton that much because the lyrics often demean women, but they do like songs to which you can hold someone close and slowly dance. One has many madrinas and doesn't like flan; the other has no madrinas and had two helpings of flan. Both are incredibly excited to leave the hogar on Monday with our class. I share their excitement, as I have actually not yet climbed the Cerro Santa Lucia, but I am always a little nervous taking our kids out on excursions-- Yet another reason why it's important to get to know the girls and let them get to know me. I will have Ben, another volunteer, with me, but it is still sure to be an adventure.

OJOS nuevos starts in two more hogares

2007-01-25T18:45:00.000-06:00

This week marks the beginning of two new talleres of digital photography for us. One class includes four girls from the Aldea Maria Reina, which is my taller, and the other one, with six girls under the charge of fellow volunteer Lindy Drew, is at an hogar further south in Santiago. While we have our own lesson plans, Lindy's group and my group meet regularly to discuss talleres and fieldtrips that we could do together. In addition to exploring photography, we want to give the girls an opportunity to get out of their hogares, see the city (and hopefully outside the city too), and spend time with other girls.

I thought that having taught one taller would have prepared me more for the second one. Even though my spanish is much better, and I feel more comfortable in front of the group, this taller has a much more developed syllabus. This time I am teaching in the Aldea Maria Reina, an institution that usually houses more than 70 girls and young women within its high brick walls, but during the summer has about less than half of this amount. Four young women will attend our "classes" which will meet twice each week. Besides learning how to work digital cameras, we will create stimulating visual stories, we will go on fieldtrips to see photography exhibits around the city, and we will go to the Puente Alto library to explore photography on the internet and learn how to use Photoshop.

The Aldea has a different feel than San Francisco. The girls seem a little tougher, a little more skeptical, a little less eager to blindly run up to you and hug you. Clearly this is a generalization, but each time I've been there I've noticed it. The management cares deeply for the girls, I can see that. Maybe it's the location-- on the city's southwest side instead of in the bustling center. Maybe it's the lack of resources and the effects of this on the girls. I know that if they had the funds there would be no broken windows, and the 60 year-old showers would be replaced with new ones that didn't have scalding pipes sticking out. Or maybe it's just that there is a high concentration of young women with a lot on their minds, a lot in their past, and a lot of questions about their future. OJOS nuevos at the Aldea is sure to bring all of us our own set of challenges and rewards.

the heat in la granja

2007-01-14T19:51:00.000-06:00

It's summer now, and whether I've learned the conversion from farenheit to celsius yet or not it doesn't really matter because I know it's hot. Hot enough to fry an egg on your head? Maybe. Or maybe just hot enough to put a fried egg on your head. It's a different kind of heat than in Chicago, where you lie in your little bedroom at night nearly drowning in your sweat with a fan in the window that's really doing nothing because the houses are too close together to stir any kind of air circulation. I lived in a 3-bedroom flat once on the second floor with two friends, you know the kind, with the bedrooms in a row along one side of the apartment, the front room, the dining room, bathroom and kitchen in a row along the other side. During the worst heat we would all pile into the middle bedroom, the one with a bay window, and try and make a wind tunnel with two box fans, forcing the stagnant, heavy air, sopping with humidity, to move through my friend's room. I remember when she borrowed another friend's window air-conditioning unit. We had sleepovers every night. But here in Santiago the heat is drier and it's directly related to the presence of the sun. During the afternoon, specifically between the hours of 2pm and 5pm, you don't want to do anything except hide in the shade somewhere and eat ice cream. I can't say that I've been eating a lot of ice cream (mostly due to budget constraints) but it's surely what I'd like to be doing. These Chileans, they love their ice cream. Before, I thought I understood but I never really understood why certain countries have a history of closing down for ciesta during the afternoon and pushing all their meals around-- but now I completely get it. You can't breathe in the afternoon sun let alone think about eating. I just ate dinner at 10pm and finally I can sit down in the computer room and do some work-- and it's after 11. Without the sun, the temperature drops to I'm not sure what but something much more agreeable. And while I still wake up in a sweat, at least I can go to sleep at night.

I've moved out of Hogar San Francisco for the summer as the girls have traveled to the sister hogar outside of Santiago. I will be working instead at Aldea Maria Reina for a couple of months directing another photography taller with some girls there. When I'm not at the Aldea I will be working here in Domingo Savio, where I am living, on some videos for VE to use to explain who we are to potential donors and volunteers. I'm not sure what will happen in March yet when the girls return and Club begins again the this community center Domingo Savio. A lot can happen in a month and a half, a lot more than what used to seem to happen in a month and a half back in Chicago. I like that. I like the fact that I don't always know what's going to happen each day, that I have the time to enjoy what I'm doing, that there is stimulation and challenges in nearly every activity in the day even if I'm just asking where the dustpan is, for example, because if I'm asking where the dustpan is I'm asking in spanish, and I might not know that word yet. Except I do know the word for dustpan, pala, because I have to know the word for dustpan as we use the dustpan all the time.

Domingo Savio is an interesting place to live. In the comuna of La Granja, it's very different from living in the city center at San Francisco. You are likely to hear all your reggaeton favorites (hello, Daddy Yankee) blasting as if it were coming from your radio at any hour of the day (and night)-- listen here. I can walk directly across the street and buy fruits and vegetables at one house, including perfectly ripe avocados, and I can walk to the corner house where there's a little store selling milk, eggs, butter, and "Sprim", a lovely powdered kool-aid type product affectionately called juice. Around the corner the other way is a panadería where I like to buy bread, cheese, and yogurt. Nobody has screens here on the barred windows which are always kept open as well as the doors. You end up feeling like you are outside even when you are inside, a sentiment which seems to be mutual for the various bugs and currents of dust that seem to feel very welcome in our house. I mind the bugs, but I don't see them as much as I see the dust. You sweep, you mop, you may even polish with the crazy polishing machine that breaks your back as you bend over to use it, but still, inevitably, the dust returns. It doesn't give up. I'm beginning to think it will always win. Even though we try, we try. We have two dogs that live with us but really one can escape through the bars when she's not pregnant, which is a problem because then she becomes pregnant, which is why we have been caring for her latest batch of 8 perritos. I wish I could say they are cute. They are cute, but really they are quite ugly. Probably because they are a product of (I'm so sorry to say) the one dog in the world I don't like, Nasha, the mother who can fit through Domingo Savio's, and some random street dog that hangs out in La Granja. I can't say that street dogs are really dogs either; there are some of them that break my heart, but others are so disgusting I'd like to disinfect everything I own only after just looking at them. Nasha, when not getting pregnant outside of Domingo Savio, hangs out with Jackie, our other dog who is primarily black and a lot cooler and larger then Nasha. They still are outside dogs, however, and not exactly the kind with which to cuddle. One day past volunteer Max took 44 ticks off of Nasha-- I don't remember how many were on Jackie. Jackie likes to sit on people chairs and to listen to our conversations through the window. This is not an easy task for two reasons: one, she is a big dog as must contort her body in a strange way to balance on the chair and two, I don't think she can understand our conversations. But she likes to try anyways, and she does it all the time. I don't blame her, really, with a playmate like Nasha... nobody likes to feel alone all the time.

ve puts on the global

2007-01-09T17:06:00.000-06:00

December 5, 2006, Voluntarios de le Esperanza formally announced our presence to Chile at Cafe Literario in downtown Santiago. We invited local NGOs, potential partners, and interested individuals to a presentation including our new video, 2 testimonials by past volunteers Jonah and Lindsay, and a discussion panel focusing on volunteerism in Chile and South America. As each guest entered the event a volunteer tied a simple green and blue bracelet around their wrist, and as each guest left they took out of a jar a piece of paper with a wish written by our kids. Lindy and I displayed some of our photography, and the evening closed with wine and appetizers. After many long days and a lot of hard work, we all entered the cocktail hour feeling a huge sense of relief. Here are some photographs of current volunteers with kids, and below you can see our new logo.

mmmmmmmendoza

2007-01-07T10:31:00.000-06:00

When I was little I invented many scenarios in my head for my future. For example, because I had been a picky eater, and would only eat out if included on the kid's menu was pasta with red sauce (preferably without meat), my family joked that maybe I should go to Italy because I would be able to eat all the time. Denny's pasta is not quite the same as Italy's. But at the age of five I developed this dream of going to Italy and eating pasta for every meal. Is that why I studied in Italy fifteen years later? Because of chain restaurant kid's menus? Regardless, another of my dreams when I was little was to dance tango in Buenos Aires. I don't know how many kids like sad accordion music, but I did. I wanted the black heels, the slicked hair, the tragic eyebrows, all of it. And I still hope to go to Buenos Aires at some point during my time in South America, but my first trip to Argentina proved a little less dramatic: a group of us traveled in bus to Mendoza to renew our visas. Two night buses, two days in the city. Here is our trip in pictures.

OJOS nuevos: exhibition at UARCIS

2007-01-02T08:54:00.000-06:00

The first exhibition of OJOS nuevos has completed its run in the Universidad ARCIS. On display from December 11 to December 21, the exhibition included a portrait of each girl and 8 of the photographs that she took throughout the course of the class. You can see all of the photos from the exhibition in this photo set. If you would like to have a show featuring these photographs, please contact me to arrange it.

Located in downtown Santiago de Chile, UARCIS offers degrees in art and social sciences. Neither Hogar San Francisco de Regis nor VEGlobal had a previous connection with UARCIS. But, as one of our responsibilities at the hogar is to walk some of the girls back to school after lunch, and UARCIS is around the corner from the hogar, I quickly took note of the university's entrance and soon found the name and web address printed on some posters there. After emailing the university one time with a proposal to host our exhibition, they immediately invited me to a meeting. The university blew me away with their support. From the presentation of the girl's work in the auditorium, to the posters and invitations they printed, to the continued relationship with my organization and with San Francisco, I am really happy that we have built this connection. You can see photos taken at the exhibition and of the university here.

We are very happy to have received enough donations to produce this first OJOS nuevos digital photography class, but we still have a long way to go. To bring this kind of opportunity to more children, we need your continued support. Please contact me if you would like to partner with us in support of this program, and you can also always contribute online at this site. Thank you!

ruby mag shows gorey photos in issue #13

2006-12-15T06:43:00.000-06:00

Visual artist Irana Douer produces an online magazine called Ruby Mag out of Buenos Aires, Argentina. This monthly publication features 11 artists from around the world in each issue, and has recently celebrated its first anniversary. Definitely bookmark this site. Issue #13, which just came online today, includes 6 photos from my Edward Gorey series. To date I have half of Gorey's Gashlycrumb Tinies alphabet story visually depicted in photographs. If you are in Santiago and would like to potentially be included in future Gorey interpretations, please let me know.

Pinochet's funeral at escuela militar

2006-12-12T21:29:00.000-06:00

When I was walking back to the hogar after the celebrations in Plaza Italia the other day, I happened to run into a couple of my girls returning after some time with their madrinas/padrinos. They saw me with my Chilean flag (which I could finally buy for my room) and, in shock, asked me if I had been at the plaza. They proceeded to pester me as to why I had been there, and if I truly felt happy that General Pinochet had died. Because I see the problems that arise even just when we like different futbol teams, and because I've seen how I falter when trying to speak spanish in important situations, I decided to try and avoid the surely proceeding political debate with these 12-year-olds for the time being. I did ask them why they liked Pinochet, but as this apparently implied that I did not, they stormed off dramatically without answering. I plan on picking this conversation back up with them soon-- when not in front of their patrons.

I didn't know where Escuela Militar itself is located, but once I exited the metro stop it was not hard to follow the Pinochet flags, buttons, and oversized g.i.joe dolls lining the path. I wonder where all of the paraphernalia came from so quickly. Who printed the "Gracias General" flags? Where is the speedy pro-Pinochet button maker? Did they make them years ago in anticipation for this day or is there an overnight system for producing mass amounts of sentimental trinkets? Once I made my way to the Escuela Militar, I wandered around the fence, the crowd slowly filing towards the gate. As soon as I made it inside however, a guard saw my camera and quickly took my elbow, steering me back outside. I had to be back at the hogar soon anyways, but I'm glad I could compare the two different sides of the situation. Chile is clearly incredibly divided, and as my friend told me (one of my students to whom I teach English) the one thing that saddens him the most is that he feels there will never be any resolution, that both sides will never be reconciled.

View more Pinochet funeral photos here.

OJOS nuevos photography exhibition at UARCIS

2006-12-12T06:13:00.000-06:00

After 10 weeks of meeting with the six girls of OJOS nuevos we had our first exhibition last night at the Universidad ARCIS in Santiago's center. We had prepared posters, invitations, and emails, but I still was nervous about who would be able to attend the show. I wanted the girls to feel important, to feel supported, and to celebrate their work with a full opening party, but due to everyone's busy schedules and the size of this city, I wasn't sure who could come. Fortunately the show exceeded my-- and my girl's-- expectations.

The first group to arrive included about 10 children with a couple of volunteers from the community center Domingo Savio. More volunteers kept filing in, and when my class showed up, they were accompanied by at least a dozen other girls from my hogar as well as the director, her assistant, and the subdirector. With additional guests from the university, the small, formal room nearly filled up. I sat at the table in the front in between the director of the communications department and the director of the university, a large projection screen behind us. Once everyone had settled into their chairs, the presentation began with a slideshow of the girl's work. A surprise to all of us, including me, the short movie placed the girl's photographs to music. In of itself, it would have still been a powerful piece. But the fact that for so many classes I, too, had begun the hour with a slideshow of photography from around the world, this slideshow seemed to validate the girl's work in a really exciting way for them. From the front of the room I watched as the light from the screen illuminated everyone's faces. In between each photo we plunged back into complete darkness, and as the next photo revealed itself I witnessed everyone's reactions. I am very happy that many girl's not in the class but from the hogar were able to come last night, as many of them have connections to some of the photographs.

Upon the closing of the slideshow, the director of the University ARCIS, Carlos Margotta Trincado, addressed the room. Unfortunately I could not understand the whole speech at the time (thank you Nicole for helping to translate afterwards) but I know that after speaking with him during the reception, we are both mutually pleased to have begun a relationship between our organizations and we look forward to working together in the future. The Universidad ARCIS is located literally around the corner from my hogar. I discovered it simply because I walk past it every day after lunch as I take the girls back to school. A university that focuses on both art and social sciences, it is a near perfect match for projects such as OJOS nuevos, and I'm very excited to have found support here in Santiago.

While I did practice my speech before the event, I still stumbled over pronunciation. I can't wait for the day when I can open my mouth and simply express myself clearly and distinctly. I feel like I have the same word bank that I use all the time, and it's so limiting. Luckily one of our social workers helped me write the speech, so even though I may not have pronounced everything with complete accuracy, at least the words themselves were intelligently written. Unfortunately there had been a problem earlier in the day, and one of my students could not attend the exhibit. But after my speech I then called each of the 5 girlsto the front of the room where I handed her my present, and the director of the university handed her a poster from the show rolled up like a diploma. I don't have daughters, and I am not even related to these girls, but I will say that I seeing them look proud and happy made me feel overwhlemingly proud and happy as well. Each girl received a collage of four of their photos, as shown above. The photo is attached to a piece of wood which will help it stay intact, as the girls move around so much. They will also receive a disc with all of their photos as well as a copy of the portrait I had taken of them for the show.

We moved into an indoor courtyard that had a transparent ceiling and trees in the center. The girl's photographs hung suspended as you can see above. The university provided us with juice and cookies, a big plus for the 25+ kids in attendance. We took group photos, and I opened my gift from the university, a book on art and politics. My girls proudly talked about their work to the other volunteers and guests, and we all enjoyed ourselves. Their photos will stay on display in the university until the end of the week (UARCIS, 53 Libertad). In addition, I will be placing them all online soon so those outside of Santiago can see what they have accomplished. Thank you to everyone who helped with OJOS nuevos, and I can't wait to start planning the next class.

Pinochet dies, Santiago erupts

2006-12-10T15:17:00.000-06:00

I had been in my room folding laundry when Lena, my roommate, called me to my computer to tell me General Pinochet had just died. He had been in the Hospital Militar for the past week after suffering a heart attack. I'm hesitant to ask people about their opinions of him as many have serious personal reasons for loving him or hating him, and those who can't decide how they feel about him seem to be few. Listening to Chileans talk about him though is quite different than reading about him in a book or learning about his policies in a distant classroom. When I left my house this evening for a walk, I just happened to bring my camera. I stopped in a nearby minimarket for some yogurt, and a small group of people stood huddled near the tv. The news camera panned huge crowds holding signs, waving flags, singing songs. I decided to head for Plaza Italia. Luckily the street parties there were under control and celebratory. Water came pouring down on the crowds from apartment windows above, bands had formed playing everyone's favorite singalongs, chants broke out and the street bounced in unison with the pumping of fists. Although there were beer bottles lying among the piles of confetti, the crowd included a lot of families and people of all ages. It wasn't until I was riding the metro home that I smelled the tear gas drifting in the doors from the streets above. More violent demonstrations have erupted in front of Palacio de La Moneda, which is about half way between my hogar and Plaza Italia, and I'm guessing they'll continue all night. When I had left Plaza Italia, it seemed the party was still only just beginning. I'll be staying in tonight, but at least I was able to partake in some of the festivities--- and finally buy my Chilean flag.

Visit here to read more about General Augusto Pinochet.
Visit my flickr account for more photos from today's celebrations.

OJOS nuevos: clase número ocho

2006-12-07T09:00:00.000-06:00

Class number eight of OJOS nuevos actually became class number eight, nine, and ten, as we met to prepare for our exposition. Working around the hogar's schedule and my VE schedule (simultaneously preparing for our VEChile event-- another entry) meant that sometimes it was better to meet with my girls one on one to help them with their responsiblities: learning the basics of poster design on the computer, how to write a persuasive invitation, etc. As always, I wish I could have had even more time with my girls as one hour does not seem sufficient; but one hour is much better than nothing, and I'm still pleased that I could at least introduce them to the topics. This invitation, designed by one of my students, is the first time that she has been able to use a more complicated computer program than Microsoft Word. It took us a long time to do it, but we had a lot of fun. Unfortunately we had to use my personal laptop to design it, and Photoshop is in English. Although she likes to dismiss compliments, I could see that she was proud of her work and asked me many times to whom I was going to send it. I wish we could get a computer that could handle Photoshop-- in spanish-- for them to use all the time. I don't like having them rely on me and my computer to have more exposure to more reliable- and exciting- technology.

Here is the poster that the Universidad ARCIS designed for the upcoming show using some of the photographs that will be in the exposition. The show will begin with a small presentation followed by juice and cookies in the gallery space. We have chosen 8 photographs from each of the 6 girls as well as a portrait of each student.

What: OJOS nuevos Photography Exhibition
Where: Universidad ARCIS, 53 Libertad, Metro ULA
When: Monday, December 11, 2006 at 7-9pm

SHAKIRA SHAKIRA

2006-11-24T06:23:00.000-06:00

I don't like to think of it as "annoying," I'd rather think of it as "persistent." I don't know just how many times I emailed Fenix Production company, but I am so, so grateful that they were able to offer us such a generous donation. Maybe it helped that I sat in the foyer of their office for a couple of hours waiting to talk to someone? Needless to say, with as busy as they were putting on this huge show, they found the time and resources to give us four tickets -- and in la platea (in seats right in front of the stage). To say that my girls had a fun time would be an embarrassingly enormous understatement. I only hope that our thank you card to Fenix will convey some of our excitement at being able to offer this opportunity to some of our girls-- maybe we can get more tickets in the future???

I received the email with the news last Friday after my director had already left. IThe whole weekend I wondered how we would decide who would go, and how we would avoid hurt or angry feelings of those not chosen. Monday morning my director decided she would discuss with one of our social workers and psychologists which girls had earned the attendances, as they would be treated as more of a prize for good behavior. Wednesday, one hour before before departing the hogar, she pulled the three girls aside, instructed them to chenge their clothes, and told them they would be leaving after dinner with me for a surprise-- and she left it at that. I stood outside the dining room and beckoned to the tia to send the girls out when it was time to leave. Tia D (my favorite tia, and also a big afan of Shakira) called the girls into a huddle and told them they were to stay with me the entire time, that we should go to the bathroom together and be careful in the crowds. The last thing she said, as she kissed us each on the cheek, was to make sure we screamed for her too. If the girls were confused up until this point, they seemed to have some idea of the type of event we were going to after that comment. As we walked to the front door of the hogar to leave, I heard them whispering to each other, "But do you think we're going? No.... it can't be... but, to Shakira???" Finally when we were out on the street I turned to them and asked them if they knew where we were going. They really didn't want to say it, as if it wouldn't be true if they did. One girl asked "to Shakira??" I said yes, and they started screaming.

The concert was perfect-- I couldn't believe our seats, we didn't have to watch the giatn television screens because we could see the real Shakira, which was just about all the girls could handle. Only one danced and screamed with me; the other two just stood there with their eyes and mouths wide open. We had a ton of fun, and the bandanas we bought for them-- with Shakira written in glitter --have found prominence in their wardrobe.

OJOS nuevos: clase número siete

2006-11-17T10:00:00.000-06:00

We have great news: the university around the corner from San Francisco, ARCIS, has agreed to host a photo exhibition for OJOS nuevos! It will be on December 11th, from 7-9pm. Thanks to a recent donation from a Chicago-based individual, we will be able to print 8 photos of each of the 6 girls. The university has offered to provide juice and snacks as well as a diploma for each girl-- this will be a surprise.

Some of the girls are now throwing themselves into their projects, grabbing me in the morning before school, class notebook in hand, showing me their ideas for catchy phrases for invites or possible design layouts. I stand on the patio at 7.15am, blinking sleep away through my glasses, clutching my morning tea while I wait to bring a few girls to their school, nodding in encouragement and a little surprised that we have made it thus far as a class. Not all of the girls have always been excited about their projects. While I am constantly limiting what I include here so as to respect the privacy of the girls with whom I work, I do want to give a realistic impression of the challenges we have faced with the tallar, workshop. The girls' situations present them with many obstacles, and while I can see strength, determination, pride, and intelligence, they are still only 12-15 years old and have a lot to learn about themselves and the world. As always, even though we may have a lesson plan about photography, other lessons frequently take precedence.

I've spent time with each student individually, talking about her photography and discussing which 8 she will choose for the exhibition. The next class is scheduled to be the last class, and we will be presenting our photos to each other in discussion form. We will probably keep meeting until the exhibition so that the girls can participate in the planning and feel more ownership with the show. Stay tuned for more updates...

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The first class of OJOS nuevos will meet for 1 more week. While we are excited to have started class, our resources are incredibly limited. We cannot keep the program running without the help of our supporters. If you would like to see OJOS nuevos succeed, please contribute in any way possible. Thank you to everyone who has donated and helped us come this far.

vamos a party

2006-11-12T14:59:00.000-06:00

This past weekend we threw a Vamos a Leer party at Domingo Savio. Three hogares participated in this 3-month long program in which children are divided into groups according to their reading level and given an appropriate set of books to read. Depending on the number of books they read, they win either a ticket to the movies or attendance at an ice cream party. Our ice cream party included over 20 kids from Domingo Savio, San Francisco de Regis, and Los Navios. Water balloons, games, and dancing made the two hours go by too fast and left all the kids wanting to stay the whole day.

One of my favorite aspects of last Saturday was that some of our kids had a fun and safe place to play and meet other kids. Unfortunately, depending on the particular situation of the kid's lives, many of them don't have something constructive and healthy to do in their free time. Community centers are a great solution for this, but they don't operate 24 hours a day; many of the live-in hogares the children don't have many options for leaving. This leaves their social skills lacking, at no fault of their own, and sometimes when the kids are in a social situation they don't know how to act. Kids who live in hogares belong to their hogar, and it's difficult for them to have friends or exposure to life outside the hogar when they can't leave. They also have a lot of baggage they are bringing with them when they meet new people-- some are increadibly skeptical, others move on the defensive. Clearly the kids need to be supervised, but if we could host more gatherings with focused events like this past weekend, perhaps they could have the space to better learn how to interact with people they don't know.

OJOS nuevos: clase número seis

2006-11-10T10:00:00.000-06:00

Objective for Week 6: Emotions. Each girl has been working on capturing photos focusing on an emotion, using one word as her guide.

Now that we've been having class for over a month, the hogar has become accustomed to seeing and being in front of the cameras. The girls are also much more comfortable with them, although we had one major problem recently: one student was walking with her camera and tripped on a hose, scraping her elbow and dropping her camera. Luckily her elbow is now fine, but the camera didn't heal quite as well. In fact it doesn't work, and I have yet to get an estimate on how much it would cost to fix. It was one of our best cameras too, but accidents are going to happen... I just wish we had a back-up camera.

I've been working on our end of the class exhibition, and I may have found a place for us. Even if we have to have the show in the hogar itself, I know we will have a show, so we have begun to divide up responsibilities during class. One girl is in charge of invitations, another of writing emails to newspapers and other personal contacts. One will design a poster, another will help me with typing the biographies and captions for the show, and the last two will be in charge of the logistics of the opening party-- juice, snacks, etc. The girls are very excited to have specific jobs, and I hope that we will draw a good crowd.

While the girls will still have access to their cameras, our class time will also be used for having critiques of our work. Taking pictures is one thing, but thinking creatively and explaining your ideas is also a goal for the class. Each girl will select 8 photos for the show, if we can afford to print that many. Not only would I like to have many of their photographs on display, but I would also like to give each student their favorite photos in print. At the end of the class they will also receive a cd of all of the photos they took.... but seeing as their access to computers is very limited, I would like to be able to give them something tangible. Hopefully we can find a printer who will give us a good deal on our printing...

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The first class of OJOS nuevos will meet for another 2 weeks. While we are excited to have started class, our resources are incredibly limited. We cannot keep the program running without the help of our supporters. If you would like to see OJOS nuevos succeed, please contribute in any way possible. Thank you to everyone who has donated and helped us come this far.

go to the coast

2006-11-09T10:20:00.000-06:00

Chicago has many attractions, but it does not have an ocean. Lake Michigan tries, and sometimes it can deceive you, if only for a moment-- especially on the Michigan side at the dunes. However, when you are sitting in the sand, watching the 12 feet (and taller) waves crash into each other, the rocks, sucking the sand underneath them with such a force as to pull people off their feet, you realize that you while it may be called "great," that lake is really nothing like the ocean.

Working in Santiago has its perks, being the work we are doing, but outside of that I'm not sure that I would characterize it as one of my favorite cities. I guess it depends on what you choose to value. I loved Chicago as a city, but I didn't feel satisfied at my job. Now I love my job, and I don't mind the city. I think I'd rather feel satisfaction from my job than from the city, also because my friends here are also my co-workers. Similar in age, similar in our realistic idealism, but extremely diverse in life experience, skills, cultural influences, etc, our group of volunteers never lacks energy, ideas, surprises, and of course our share of drama. The city may seem a little smoggy and drab at times, but our work and our organization definitely keeps it interesting.

Traveling outside of Santiago has begun for the class of Septiembre, 2006. A group of people are in Patagonia right now, and another in Peru. A small group of us recently went to Valparaiso and Vina del Mar, and in a couple of weeks will go to Mendoza... it's just that old 3-month time: renewing the tourist visa. But even without that marvelous excuse to leave the country, leaving the city you realize how exhausting being here in Santiago can be. After the weekend in Valparaiso, only 2 hours away by bus, my thoughts (and my lungs) felt much clearer. While for me there is nothing like a sun-filled day at the beach, I still preferred Valparaiso as a city. Reminiscent of Cinque Terre in Italy, I could walk the streets for hours enjoying the endless curiosity the city provokes. But oh, the beach..... must return to the beach. Soon.

If you'd like to see all of the photos, visit the set here.

OJOS nuevos: clase número cinco

2006-11-03T10:55:00.000-06:00

We've now reached the half-way point of OJOS nuevos. With four weeks behind us, I thought it would be a good idea to spend class reviewing our progress. We started class with a photography slideshow, followed by a discussion focusing primarily on a photo by Roger LeMoyne of a pool of blood, a consequence of an Israeli / Palestinian conflict. I'm not sure what exposure our kids have to current events, especially of an international scope. The girls are not shy to ask about the photos we view though, and I feel that powerful images such as this one spark their interest in a unique and influential way. It's not the same if I were to tell them about conflicts in Israel , Palestine, or anywhere else; the girls wanted to know whose blood it was, and why it had been spilled.

Each day the girls have their cameras they become a little more creative. I felt at first that we were at a disadvantage for not being able to leave the hogar with our cameras. I would still like to leave before the end of class, the main problem being memory cards and batteries, because I think it would give them a much wider view of what they can do with their cameras. But even within our limitations, the girls find ways to create interesting and unusual images. Here is an example of one of the portraits taken over the last two weeks. The girls are learning to explore a little more, to find something new within the same familiar walls of their hogar.

For the next class, each student is to choose one word and capture it in some manner in at least 20 photos. So far I've heard "solitude," "anger," and "affection" being thrown around, but stay tuned for next week's class for final results.

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The first class of OJOS nuevos will meet for another 3 weeks. While we are excited to have started class, our resources are incredibly limited. We cannot keep the program running without the help of our supporters. If you would like to see OJOS nuevos succeed, please contribute in any way possible. Thank you to everyone who has donated and helped us come this far.

drama at domingo savio

2006-11-01T10:15:00.000-06:00

I've seen plays in the theatres downtown Chicago, I've crouched mesmorized in the velvety shadows of the Vienna opera house, and I've attended my fair share of high school musicals and college performances, but I've never witnessed such anticipation or self-gratification from actors as I did at Domingo Savio last week. You would have thought that the kids were about to appear before some temperamental queen and their lives depended on their performance. Instead, more than 25 children enacted two plays in the dining room-turned-theatre, the window treatments becoming stage curtains, the kitchen becoming backstage. Friends and relatives crammed into the front room to support their young thespians, ready for the culmination of months of practice.

I arrived to find the club in chaos with kids running around with half-painted faces, tias and tios running after them , Tia J giving last minute tutorials on the "stage," and volunteers hanging curtains and adjusting lights. Once gathered together, costumed and decorated, all the children stood in a circle. Tia J asked that everyone close their eyes and think about all of the preparation for this day and the upcoming performance. Some children confessed to the group how nervous they felt, as they had never acted in front of an audience before, others just bit their nails and fidgeted. Tia J offered supportive compliments, and reminded them of their confidence and ability. With that, it was time to begin.

The older group acted first, the younger second, each child with their own chance to shine in the lights and command the room's attention. Mistakes didn't exist: they were brushed off without the slightest notice. Whether the children had 5 years or 15 years, everyone acted seriously and sincerely, transforming the dining room into the most captivating stage and capturing everyone's hearts. The end of the plays marked an especially emotional moment as two girls bid farewell to the club. After having spent over one year at Club Domingo Savio, the director Tia O had told me, the girls had made huge strides in behavior and confidence-- the theatre project being very influential.

Domingo Savio is a community center, providing children a safe and stimulating place to stay after school until early evening. Once a week, a theatre teacher opens up the old garage behind the center, which she has turned into a makeshift stage. Donated dresses and old suits have created a costume bank, and the kids build inventive and elaborate props using things like egg cartons and old water bottles. Right now, Domingo Savio is raising funds to rebuild the old garage into a brand new, well-equipped theatre for all of the community to enjoy. Obviously this huge undertaking requires much support. If you or anyone you know would like to help, please contact me for more information.

Please view the photographs from this spectacular event, and spread the word about the Domingo Savio Theatre Project. If you'd like to read more about Domingo Savio, please read the article from September 6.

OJOS nuevos: clase número cuatro

2006-10-27T10:58:00.000-05:00

Objective for Week 4: Portraits: Part II. Students will continue to explore portraiture in an experimental but guided manner. The goal for this week is to push past initial compositions and habitual picture taking.

Working in any of our hogares, I think we would all agree that we have to be able to be flexible and patient. I know I had had a plan for the 8 week class, but because of the nature of the hogar, I have had to switch things around a lot. We weren't initially going to focus on portraiture two weeks in a row, but due to many unforseen circumstances, it seemed best to continue for one more week with a similar objective. We are about at the half way point for class, and to keep ideas fresh I decided to dedicate class #4 to brainstorming and discussion. Gathered around the computer, we started by reviewing a series of portraits I took of Lena. Because they are becoming more comfortable discussing photography, they immediately began conversing over which photos provoked which emotions. Some photos had more extreme compositions than others, some contained strange effects of light and shadow. I remember in the beginning of this project, the girls would review their photos on their cameras and immediately judge them, asking me to please teach them how to delete the images (the cameras are in english). Now they are learning to wait and view the image for what it is, because an "imperfect" image might actually be more interesting and creative. I saw them taking their time when viewing the portraits of Lena, and formulating more carefully their responses.

For the bulk of this week's class, we spread out in the comedor, or dining room, each student at one table. I passed out a large sheet of brown paper and markers, and asked the girls to write "Mi Hogar" in the center (my home). To the tunes of Andrew Bird, we created mind maps exploring thought patterns, associations, and connections stemming from the center and blooming to fill the whole paper. I thought I would have to help them more, walk around and encourage them to keep thinking, but more than half of the girls seemed to take off running with the concept. It did seem to help for me to reassure them that these were private exercises, and they should write their associations honestly.

Project for Week 4: Continue exploring portraiture, referencing the ideas and feelings from class discussions and documented on your mind map.

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The first class of OJOS nuevos will meet for another 4 weeks. While we are excited to have started class, our resources are incredibly limited. We cannot keep the program running without the help of our supporters. If you would like to see OJOS nuevos succeed, please contribute in any way possible. Thank you to everyone who has donated and helped us come this far.

how to motivate the underdog

2006-10-22T00:45:00.000-05:00

When I first told "Mari", age 7, on Friday afternoon, that she would be coming with us to Liga de Futbol the following day, she didn't believe me. We had just watched another girl run across the wide concrete patio to the outstretched arms of her madrina, with whom she would be spending her weekend. Mari, watching the happy spectacle, immobile and long-faced, told me that she would feel better if she could see her father. The girls who don't have second families or permission from the court to stay with certain family members usually stay in the hogar the whole weekend. Liga de Futbol, our monthly inter-institutional competition, allows a team of girls or boys to spend the afternoon playing soccer and other games, painting faces, listening to music, and meeting other kids outside of their hogar. While it may not seem like a huge deal to some people, many of our kids look forward to this monthly trip with great anticipation. "I'm too little," she said. "I don't get to go there." I had to walk with her to the office where Tia M, my director, with her contagious smile and patient composure, explained that as a couple of the older girls who usually play on our hogar's team were leaving for the weekend, Mari would get the opportunity to participate. As soon as we returned to the patio, Mari started running around the perimeter, counting her laps. When asked what she was doing, she replied, in all seriousness, "Training."

Our team didn't win. I've actually heard that our team has never won. Our team didn't exactly play to their full potential, because unfortunately they don't really know what that is. We only just received a ball as a donation (thank you!) and it's very difficult to run a soccer practice, although you can believe Lena and I have tried. I stood helpless on the sidelines, watching my girls, younger than the other team, become more and more deflated. They didn't know how to pass, and they fought over the ball among themselves: we didn't have any sense of team. The older girls, frustrated, insulted the younger girls and bullied them into sitting on the sidelines saying (against their will) that they didn't want to play, and when I overruled the older girls they stormed off to the bathrooms in tears because they knew they wouldn't win. We needed help.

Raul, one of the refs and a favorite tio (all the tios are favorites, as positive male role models are rather scarce in these children's lives), helped my team and I get through the day, but we knew that they needed more than one day's attention. We devised a plan where every week for one hour Raul will come to San Francisco and run organized soccer practice. Because he is Chileno, super patient, and incredibly knowledgeable about soccer, he is a perfect match for the task. Many of these girls have never been encouraged in sports, and for Raul to come with the specific intention of teaching them about the game, we're hoping they'll take themselves more seriously when trying to play it. Maybe we won't win at the next Liga de Futbol, but if we could learn a little bit more about teamwork I think the girls would have a much better time with each other.

OJOS nuevos: clase número tres

2006-10-19T10:13:00.000-05:00

Objective for Week 3: Portraits: Part I. Students will begin to explore portraiture in an experimental but guided manner. The goal for this week is to challenge the students to feature people in their photos while trying to capture an emotion or mood as well, moving away from posed snapshots towards more complex, pensive images.

For the third week, we began class with a photography slideshow, this time accompanied by the deep, rolling tones of a Seu Jorge song. Because we will be exploring photographing people more intently this week, all of the photos in the slideshow featured portraiture of many different kinds. I enjoy researching for these short movies because I fly all over the internet discovering photography groups , artists, and creative initiatives. I am building a collection of these sites, and along with a bibliography of all artists used in the slideshows, I plan on distributing this information to the girls as well as featuring it here on the blog. One of the photos I incorporated into the video showed a boy in prison in the Philippines, taken by photographer Hazel Thompson for her "Kids Behind Bars" story. While I do ask for silence during the slideshows, immediately upon reaching the end the girls asked about this boy, and what was wrong with his skin. We then entered a very interesting conversation about prison, children, and crime, and I found the girls asking questions that revealed them to be, simultaneously, rather naive and (sadly) experienced about these subjects. The initial giggles at the sight of his condition quickly dissipated into wonder and something like sympathy. This was precisely the kind of moment that makes me wish I had more than one hour each week with my class.

We stayed huddled around my laptop to critique their photos from the last week. Even though a couple days of rain had prevented us from shooting, each student still had a good amount of work to show. Lena and I both commented later that each girl showed her strengths in remarkably different ways. In certain activities, some girls may show more interest or creativity, while others seem to open up to completely different kinds of exercises. Because I want each girl to benefit as much as she can from the class, and there are only 6 students, I find myself trying to plan the widest range of activities possible and to cater them to the girl's personalities. I never knew teachers spent so much time on lesson plans (teachers: nice work). After reviewing their photos, I pulled out a few newspapers and a National Geographic I had purchased earlier in the week (thank you to those who have donated!). To the tunes of Ethiopiques from my computer, I passed out scissors and glue, and the girls began making collages in their journals of images they found interesting for any reason. Due to time restraints, they only had time to fill a few pages, but I hope that we will be able to repeat this exercise with more newpapers and magazines of different kinds because they had a great time selecting their images, laying them out in their journals, and calling me over to proudly show off their creations.

Project for Week 3: Create 10 portraits that incude elements such as a part of a story, an emotion, a mood, the person's character, interests, worries, etc...

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The first class of OJOS nuevos will meet for another 5 weeks. While we are excited to have started class, our resources are incredibly limited. We cannot keep the program running without the help of our supporters. If you would like to see OJOS nuevos succeed, please contribute in any way possible. Thank you to everyone who has donated and helped us come this far.

jornada: cajón de maipo

2006-10-16T17:08:00.000-05:00

Every three months, a new "class" of volunteers arrives in Santiago. After one month of volunteering with VE, the class is invited to participate in an organization-wide retreat. In a nutshell, this is how I might have explained my first month:

Orientation filled the first week, after which we dispersed all over the city to institutions, host families, apartments, and residence halls. In my opinion, my first week at my institution didn't make much sense. I felt constantly confused and overwhelmed, but for me, I think because of the excitement of finally beginning to realize that I made it here, the challenges didn't completely deflate me. The second week I knew a few of the some 25 girls here, and I could ride the Metro, but I still couldn't follow directions in spanish, give directions in spanish, or accept any real responsibility in the hogar. The third week I learned how to take a micro by myself, a gigantic step forward in my relationship with Santiago's public transit system, and I knew over half of the girl's names. Lena and I began to walk a group of 11 girls back to school after lunch, and we successfully ran some tallares, or workshops, as we like to call our activities for the kids. I also met with a printer to discuss the specs for VE's first marketing brochure, and I learned that brillo means the paper is "glossy" and mate means the paper has a "matte" finish. Week four introduced earlier alarm clocks to our mornings, as we take turns accompanying four girls to and from their special school a couple of metro lines away. Not only can I communicate a little better with the girls and the tias, I know everybody's name and am learning much more about their lives and personalities.

We left last Friday in the afternoon for Cajón de Maipo. The busride took about 2.5 hours and probably was gorgeous, but due to the rain, heavy clouds, foggy windows, and leaking roof, I didn't really notice. We arrived in the gloomy, late afternoon and filled ourselves with tea in our beautiful cabin, soon realizing that the rain had turned to snow. The next morning the sun took quite awhile to melt the ice and snow, a strange mix of summer and winter lingering for hours after dawn. Meanwhile our retreat proved incredibly relaxing, giving us the much needed space and time to think, to discuss, to breathe clean mountain air and process the collage of events layered in piles in our minds. While the above description of my first month is true, so many more thoughts, feelings, frustrations, successes, defeats, and questions had been building upon each other that, had they not been addressed in some manner, they could have become larger obstacles to my being a productive volunteer. For this, I am glad we went on the retreat, and I look forward to the next one already. If you'd like to see our weekend in photos, please visit here.

OJOS nuevos: clase número dos

2006-10-12T16:09:00.000-05:00

Objective for Week 2: Encourage students to approach their subject matter in new and creative ways. By practicing "getting closer," students can focus on searching for details they may have otherwise dismissed, on seeking unique points-of-view, and on gaining confidence in moving with their camera to capture a more interesting image.

Class #2 opened with another slideshow of photography from around the world. While they were well-behaved during the first class, I found that after one week they have come to take this class much more seriously. I asked for silence and stillness during the slideshow, and all four girls in attendance sat quietly watching the wide range of images I selected for this week flash before them to an instrumental by Carrie. To extend the space created for individual thinking, I then asked that each student move to a seat in the room away from everyone else. As they wrote or drew in their journals, I passed out their portraits we had taken for the first page, and I felt pleased to see that everyone had found time within the week to write about last class's question and to decorate their cuaderno a little more.

For the bulk of the class, we gathered around the computer to view each student's first photos. I had no problem keeping their attention on the computer screen, and I could see, as each girl's turn came, a sliding scale of emotions. Some seemed eager to hear what others had to say, some seemed a little shy to be the center of attention, and others seemed just blatantly excited to be finally seeing their work blown up on the screen before them.

Lena and I had each written personal comments about each girl's work, but we decided to pass these sheets out after class, once the girls had a chance to formulate their own discussions first. Running a critique in the english language is difficult enough, from articulating why a certain piece evokes a particular feeling to explaining how to offer constructive criticism respectfully. I only hope that the mistakes I made did not deter too much from the point of what I was trying to say. For the record, "to capture" is captar, "very impressive" is muy impresionante, and the word for "answer" is respuesta NOT repuesto; if you say repuesto you are actually saying "spare part," as in, "I need a repuesto for my broken car," and 6 young adolescent females will break into giggling hysterics. When we finally did pass out the comment sheets we had written, a couple of the girls surprised me with their insistence on notas; they were looking for a number from 1-7, the Chilean grading system. I explained, as best I could, that there would be no grades in this class, rather, there will be areas in which you have succeeded and areas in which you could use to give more attention, effort, or time.

Project for Week 2: Create 15 photographs focusing on details. This assignment is to help students not to quickly dismiss subject matter because it isn’t immediately interesting. Encourage students to take their time while walking with their camera, to select their subject matter and move in closer than they ordinarily might, and to compose their images with attention to detail.

To introduce the project for the coming week, I showed a filmstrip of images I took over the weekend walking around our neighborhood Barrio Brasil. This quickly turned into a game as the girls tried to guess the subject matter of each image. While some classes may have difficulty building a sense of class unity among the students, the six girls in my class not only get along incredibly well, but they seem to have a special relationship that mixes friends with sisters with something secret and serious. I am quickly finding myself intrigued by this group of young women, and I wonder what will happen to them when it becomes their time to leave this barrio, this hogar.

more than just an idea

2006-10-07T16:32:00.000-05:00

After our first photography class on Wednesday, I will admit I felt a little anxious about what would happen next. For months, nearly a year, I have been bouncing the idea of moving to Chile around in my head. Shortly after the initial spark lit I discovered VE, and before I even applied I knew I wanted to help create some kind of art curriculum for the kids. Plans and planning can be very enticing. It's exciting to explore the possibilities of what you might be able to do, to imagine an event or a movement that can change people, that can span time, that can make a statement. But realizing a plan can become tedious, strenuous, and sometimes even too much. I know before I came that my plans seemed awfully lofty, that the plethora of unknown variables weighed heavily against me. Idealism is tricky-- sometimes it scares people away. This photography program seemed incredulous to some, and at times, to myself as well. As I walked down the path Wednesday night after class, from our classroom off the courtyard to our little set of rooms in the corner of the compound, I wondered if this class was really going to be a success.

Yesterday, Friday, gave me a substantial boost of confidence. Usually the girls go back to school after eating lunch, their biggest meal of the day, here in the hogar. On Fridays, however, they do not return to colegio. With a beautiful spring afternoon ahead of us, I encouraged the girls to finish their chores and homework quickly so they could check out their cameras for the first time. All six signed their name on their camera's sign-out sheet, and I told them now the cameras were entirely their responsibility. From even the first couple of photos I could see that this is going to be a very good class. Because they have digital cameras and can review the photos instantly, they could see immediately their success and progress. Each image they took gave them more excitement and curiosity about the photographic process, and made me believe even more in the project. There is still a ton of work to do, but I feel that we are in a good starting place and moving forward.

OJOS nuevos: clase número uno

2006-10-05T14:46:00.000-05:00

Last night at San Francisco de Regis home for girls in Santiago, Chile, Voluntarios de la Esperanza held our first class of the digital photography program "OJOS nuevos." Because we have six cameras for the 25 girls who live here, the director of the institution and I decided to choose six girls for the first pilot class. The girls range from ages 12 - 15, and each one is very excited to be participating in OJOS nuevos. This class will meet every Wednesday for 8 weeks and will include discussions about photography throughout history and in current times, creative thinking exercises, and reviews of their work. In addition, the director has approved excursions for the girls so that we may take the cameras outside of the hogar's walls and explore the city. While VE's funds are shared among all of the projects we run, I hope that we may even be able to sponsor a trip to another city.

I opened the class with a short movie I created showing a wide range of photographs from around the world. We sat in the near darkness around the computer, the images and the haunting melodies of Ayub Ogaba calming the room and helping us gain focus. I plan on starting every class in a similar manner, as the subdued format immediately draws the girls in and simultaneously exposes them to many kinds of photography. Next we did an activity to help explain that the class would be more discussion based, that frequently there is not one answer to questions raised by a piece of art. I had chosen six images, passed out a piece of paper to each girl, and had her number the paper 1-6-- without putting her name on it. For each photo, we wrote how the image made us feel, what the image seemed to be communicating, and what we thought was happening in photograph. I'd like to include this acitivity in a future class, as we practice taking more time to respond and allowing ourselves more time to think. The girls, at first, created a race out of completing each task; I think this will be a good lesson for them. After passing them in, mixing them up, and redistributing the papers, we took turns reading out loud the opinions on each sheet. Some of the girls took this activity more seriously from the beginning, and I'm hoping that they will become positive leaders for the class.

Because the goal of this photography program is to encourage the girls to have the time and to learn to think more creatively, I have included journals as part of the project. We gave each girl her own notebook with the name of the class as well as her name written on the inside cover. I took a portrait of each girl by herself, and these will be affixed to the first page. We spent some time decorating the journals to make them more personal, and I made it clear to them that I would not be reading these journals, nor anybody else. They are for writing, glueing photos that they find and like, sketching ideas and making mind maps. I gave them an idea for their first entry: If you had a magic wand, and could be or do anything you wanted, what would you choose?

Finally came the time for cameras. Each girl has been assigned a number which corresponds to a camera. Any time the girls have finished their homework and chores, they can find me and ask to check out their camera. They can use it in the hogar however they like, and each week they will have an assignment on which to work. I would prefer to leave the hogar once a week with the girls, but due to funding we will have to see what happens. I made it clear that once the girls have signed their name on the sign-out sheet, they are completely responsible for the camera until they bring it back to me. I think this is another important aspect of the class, as the girls are being trusted with a piece of equipment they know is incredibly valuable. By showing that we have confidence in them, perhaps they will feel more confident themselves. Hopefully we can get a back-up camera in case there is an accident!

I would like to extend a gigantic thank you to everyone who contributed to this photography program thus far, and I hope that we can continue to build a network of support to keep the program running and to enable us to make it grow. VE serves over 1000 children throughout Santiago, and we are making great strides as an organization. If you are interested in supporting this project, please visit this website. Thank you for your help, and please check back for weekly updates!

roughly 33 degrees south and 70 degrees west

2006-10-03T08:51:00.000-05:00

When I first thought about leaving Chicago, I toyed with the idea of returning to Europe, specifically to Italy, where I had enjoyed studies during university. I quickly moved to dismiss the destination for a few reasons. First, I've already been there. If I were going to throw a guillotine down on my life, I wanted to pursue a new adventure. Second, I have been exposed to Europe and its history far too unevenly throughout my education. "World history" in elementary school and high school discussed the Roman empire, the Greeks with their gods and their ideas of the republic, World War I and of course, a great deal about the United States. I never learned about Chinese culture or what Kenya was like before the British and the Portuguese, and I definitely never even heard the words South America used in any context other than listing all of the continents.

I still have yet to leave Santiago proper because of my work here. But this has allowed me to build a better understanding of the city. With over 6 million inhabitants, which is over 40% of the entire country, Santiago is one of the largest cities in Latin America. It also is a major hub for multinational corporations. There is an area of Santiago with contemporary skyscrapers, sidewalks full of suits walking to work with Starbucks in hand, and restaurants and bars fit for the poshiest clientele. During orientation week we quickly learned the difference between this area of Santiago and the areas in which we worked: you may have only spent 45 minutes on the metro, but it's as if the two stops were on two different planets. Here are some photos from around the city, taken over the past week.

afternoons at the hogar

2006-09-25T15:02:00.000-05:00

We live in a cluster of buildings situated around a couple of adjoining patios. While there is a church immediately next door to the complex, and the girls say their prayers before meals and attend catechism classes, I don't know if the hogar is funded privately or through the government. In comparison to other hogares, I believe that we are very fortunate, and have access to all of our essentials and even more. Still, however, resources are scarce. The cheerfully painted walls around the patio brighten the look of the place, but there is still a lot of pain and anger. Those in charge of the hogar believe in keeping the girls occupied, which definitely helps with their behaviors and attitudes. We clean multiple times a day, and everyone shares in the daily maintenance of our lives here. The tias are the bosses here, we have two day tias and two night tias. Each shift lasts 12 hours and consists of everything one might need to do to raise 26 girls. Needless to say, they are quite busy.

The girls look to us volunteers for social, cultural, recreational, and supplemental educational projects. Our website outlines many of our current projects, but we are always starting new ones as more volunteers arrive with fresh energy and ideas. One of our biggest projects is called Liga de Futbol and organizes soccer tournaments in which teams from different hogars can play against one another. This program is important because not only does it give these children a chance to leave their hogar for a full Saturday of fun (with a meal included) but they also can meet other children from other hogars and experience healthy competition and teamwork. The girls at San Francisco de Regis love to play soccer, but I had heard that they never win any games. I found out why the other day: this is their only soccer ball. I dug it out of a closet, deflated, and the girls immediately gathered around me to play with it. I told them after lunch I would go to the gas station to fill the ball, or pelota, up with air, and they could barely contain their excitement. You can imagine how I felt when the worker at the closest gas station told me there was a hole in the ball, that he couldn't inflate it. I had to walk back to the girls and tell them I would explain the rules of soccer to them another day, when we had a better ball. They looked at me as if they had heard this all before.

Luckily we do have some supplies in a closet here in our set of rooms on the complex. I found a few balls of yarn, and while I'd rather teach the girls to crochet or something more useful, we only had yarn at this point. So I decided to teach them fingerknitting instead. The first girl to learn, I will call her Ana, told me that she didn't think that she would be able to do it. Ana is a bit shy, and being maybe 9 years old, a little awkward. She insisted she would not be able to learn. Lena and I sat with her, and within minutes she insisted she didn't need our help. Other girls came and went, fingerknitting as long as their rather short attention spans, but Ana sat in the sun in her chair all afternoon, intent on finishing the whole ball of yarn. And when she did, and the other girls poured compliments over her finished piece, she couldn't stop smiling.

independence month

2006-09-19T10:09:00.000-05:00

While September 18th might be the day Chile officially celebrates its independence day, the days of the month leading up to it are filled with anticipation and preparation: Cueca, the traditional national music and dance, is played in every store and colectivo (cars with specific routes where buses don't go), flags are sold at nearly every intersection, and empanadas become even more abundant. On the 18th itself the city center becomes a bundle of enclosed outdoor party areas with rather steep entrance fees-- inside you can purchase more traditional food and watch performers dancing Cueca. In the neighborhoods, or comunas, you can find bars and parties where, whether in costume or not, Cueca has taken over. Regardless of where you are, you will be haunted by the smell of asado, as Chileans barbecue enormous amounts of their favorite meats in their backyards and on the streets.

Above, at Domingo Savio community center, the children are showing off their best Cueca moves in a dance competition. Some of the kids tried to teach me the steps, explaining that its a dance about courtship. Unlike one step that is repeated or transformed at the dancer's will, Cueca seemed more like a narrative to me. Handkerchiefs are waved, and the dancers move in half moons around each other as the men try to capture the women's attention. After the dance competition, the kids rotated around a series of games set up in D.Savio's patio. Baked empanadas finished the evening, with of course, loads of candy...

Fortunately I was at Domingo Savio before the kids arrived, and I helped make the dozens of empanadas we would need for the party. I'm not sure how they make the dough, as it was already prepared, but inside you will find meat cooked with spices and onions, a quarter of a boiled egg, and one black olive. Tia Olga kept reminding us to press harder as we assembled them, as they have a tendency to open up as they bake. I wish I could tell you how they tasted (vegetarian...)-- I know that the kids really liked them!

now it's time for the real thing

2006-09-14T13:27:00.000-05:00

Orientation week officially ended on Sunday, as we all moved into our own living situations, but due to Monday being September 11th our directors decided to have us stay out of the city center and attend an all day English teaching workshop headed by WorldTeach. September 11th in the United States might refer to the attack on the Twin Towers in New York, but here in Santiago de Chile the same date might recall memories of the 1973 coup and the beginning of General Pinochet's Reign of Terror. Lena and I didn't know the micros, or buses, would stop running quite as early as they did on Monday, and thus waited to find a cab for a few hours. Luckily the cab driver didn't charge us too much extra to get us home safely, despite a few minor fires in the streets. Most of the protest action took place far away from where we were going, and many people stayed inside this year as not only was it the anniversary of the coup, but this year it was also the 20th anniversary of the asassination attempt on Pinochet. For more information on Chile, Augusto Pinochet or Salvador Allende, and the coup of 1973 I recommend starting with the BBC's country profile on Chile.

Meanwhile I put up some photos from orientation week, and you can see them here. Even though we've only known each other for one week, the 17 members of the Class of Septiembre 2006 have spent nearly every second together-- especially since we were all staying at the hostel together. We are even passing around the same persistent cold / sore throat, and I cannot wait for it to start getting warmer. True, when the sun is out and directly hitting you, it can get quite warm. But in the shade and at night, it becomes so cold I can't stop shaking (there's no heat). I think my body is in shock and protesting my clothes-packing decisions. The good news is that the next 5 days will be full of festivities as Chile prepares to celebrate its independence day on September 18th. Monday is sure to be full of street parties and shows, with the traditional music, dance (Cueca), and food already saturating every moment of the entire month of September.

Work at the institutions has begun. I am working at San Francisco de Regis along with Lena. The Catholic run home is in charge of 30 girls from ages 4-15. We will be providing activities in music, dance, futbal, art and art history, and hopefully! digital photography. Fortunately there are computers onsite, which is one step closer to successfully implementing the digital photography program so many people have helped me build. I am currently working on the lesson plans, and will keep updates of our progress. Until then, besos.

half-way through orientation week

2006-09-06T20:55:00.001-05:00

Orientation week is now in full swing. This past Sunday all volunteers had finally arrived at La Casa Roja, the backpackers hostel in which we are living for the week. After making a trip to the local grocery store, we tested our teamwork in preparing dinner for all of us in the huge communal kitchen here. While I have eaten in some cafés and restaurants here, I have only tried a few dishes. Already I can tell that I will be eating more avocado, or "palta," than I probably have in my whole life up until this point. But I'm ok with that, since you can find variety in the items on which you put the palta: here, palta can even go on pizza. We decided to stick with pasta, since there is a whole aisle of it here in the grocery store, but if you are particular about your pasta sauce you may find the tomato to sugar ratio in the Chilean version of pasta sauce rather staggering.

The way that VE is structured, a new "class" of volunteers arrives every three months. Participants may leave after the first three months, or they can stay for as long as they would like thereafter. Most people stay between 3-12 months, depending on what they have time for and what they can afford. The first week you are in Santiago is thus your orientation week which is hosted by the any current volunteers and is a collage of meetings, presentations, games, tours, talks and meals. Monday morning we began this very full, intense week. I have a feeling that my days here might quite possibly be full and intense for the entire duration of the trip. As of halfway through this orientation, we have visited 2 hogars, or homes, shared small group and large group meals, participated in many games including a scavenger hunt around Santiago, met with the directors of the centers in which we will be working, and engaged in many stimulating discussions about what we are trying to do here.

Here we are at the Casa Grande, or Hogar Esperanza, with Luke about to present Jorge Daveggio. Jorge is the director of this hogar, and the instigator of the foundation. We gathered in the living room and he told us the story of why he founded this place when he was only 19. He had a job when he was 18 where he was around kids his own age and younger, and he would see them pick through the garbage to look for food. But everyday after work, he would go home to his family and food would be ready for him on the table. The injustice struck him so deeply that he and two friends founded this private home with the mission being to raise the children there as if they were their own. 25 years later, Jorge is still playing father to the kids at Hogar Esperanza, or Shelter of Hope. He imparted realistic and sincere advice, encouraging us to be positive, proactive, humble, and determined. I feel very comfortable knowing that he has made himself available at any time to any one for questions or discussions-- there is much to learn from him.

During orientation week, we are divided into small groups of new volunteers led by one current volunteer. Throughout the week the small groups visit other hogars or centers so that we have a better understanding of the scope of VE, as the network of organizations with which it works is very wide in range. My group's first visit was to Club Domingo Savio, a community center that has existed in some capacity for over 20 years. While Domingo Savio used to be a live-in home, now it is called a "Club" and acts as more of a preventative force in the at-risk community in which it is found. D.Savio is funded completely privately, and even though it's resources are still very limited, the positive energy in its classrooms and playground fights hard against the hard reality of the children who work and play there. The volunteers assist and support the strong permanent staff of the Club, and they are the only ones who actually sleep in the modest building. Many of the children who are a part of D.Savio have single mothers who work incredibly long hours, and so after a half day of school (a normal school day for most) the kids would have nowhere to go. Club D.Savio provides them with personal attention with their homework, basic lessons about right and wrong, health and hygiene, proper behavior and the like, exposure to music and theatre, and a hopeful view of the future. What's more, every Tuesday parents are invited in to cook in the kitchen and to see what their children have been doing. Club D.Savio costs no money to families save 1.000 pesos per month for toilet paper-- the equivalent of about $2.00. If somebody cannot pay, they can simply donate one day a month of their time to help clean the Club.

Today we had the privilege of meeting with Steve Reifenburg in Harvard's office in Las Condes, a very affluent neighborhood in Santiago. Over 20 years ago he too volunteered at Santo Domingo Savio; he now focuses on international conflict resolution. Another genuine and strong leader, Steve discussed with us a wider view of Chile's socio-economic position and the role of poverty in its history. We weighed its successes against its challenges, from female presidents to a new highway that excludes citizens with its incredibly high tolls. With the education system being one of its most frustrating obstacles to date, Steve asked us stay mindful of our roles as sort of teachers in one way or another.

I am anxious to see the Aldea Maria Reina, where I will be working. I have heard from other groups what it is like, and I have met the director, but a clear understanding of what I will bring to the institution is not to be had until I go. I will admit I am nervous. But even half way through orientation, I feel that I have a strong network of supporters and access to valuable advisors. Until this weekend then, cheers.

first weekend in santiago

2006-09-03T22:56:00.000-05:00

With orientation starting tomorrow and only four hours of sleep supporting me due to last night's salsa dance outing, I am heading to bed directly. But the first photos of the city are up for viewing, you can see them by visiting here.

of take-offs and landings

2006-09-02T17:41:00.000-05:00

I'm here. After something like 24 hours of travel-- only a couple planes, lots of waiting-- I am in Santiago de Chile with all of my luggage. The flight to Miami seemed like nothing out of the ordinary really, but during my layover in the Miami airport I began to realize that something strange was on its way. For awhile it felt odd that I was not getting up and going to work but to be honest actually it hasn't bothered me that much. Part of me believed that this was all just a farce and I would wake up and go back to being a Marketing Director again, in the cubicle, with the schedule. Saying goodbye to my mom at the airport gave me a hint, but hanging around the Miami airport, where everyone speaks a different language, secured it: I would finally be leaving the country. I couldn't be more excited to be here. The flight from Miami to Santiago proved as easy as I think an 8 1/2 hour long flight could be minus the fact that I don't think I slept more than 3 hours. Losing my luggage, a great fear of mine, thankfully did not happen. With an arrival time set at 6.40am, I approached Santiago from the north with the Andes courting the plane out my window. The sun rise pending behind the mountains created a rainbow along the horizon, and made the jagged tops looks like they were on fire. In this photo, you can see the clouds covering Santiago, nestled between the mountains here and the ocean on the other side.

Three of us arrived at the airport at various times yesterday morning-- Jackie, Michelle, and myself-- with another five here this morning. And now, must meet them for an Escudo next door.

"hello chile" benefit a success

2006-08-26T20:08:00.000-05:00

Sunday, August 13th at the Empty Bottle in Chicago we hosted Hello Chile to raise funds and collect photography equipment for Voluntarios de la Esperanza (VE). Well over 100 people attended the show which included live music, a local artist print sale, and a raffle. Thanks to everyone who came and helped with the event, we raised just over $1000 for VE. All proceeds from the event will help VE produce more educational and social programs for disadvantaged youth in Santiago, Chile. We were also able to introduce VE to Chicago through the benefit and the press promoting it-- please check out the interview on Chicago Public Radio's Worldview. The digital camera count is currently a tentative 7 (as I am still checking out compatibility and cord situations) but this quantity is definitely enough to start some photography classes. To all who came, I really appreciate that you did. Thanks.

I'd like to say thank you to all of the visual artists that donated prints to the print sale. The layout of the Empty Bottle seemed a perfect fit for the type of event that Hello Chile ended up being. With the front door leading into a quieter gathering area, guests were able to collect information on VE, drop in a few raffle tickets and browse the rather extensive print sale before entering the music and bar space. All the artists proved incredibly generous, and I offer an enormous thank you to everyone who participated. Thank you to: Bernie McGovern, Patrick Tianen, Sarah Ferone, Scott Strazzante, Lindy Drew-- all the way from Chile! Michelle Schackmann, Steve Johnston, Saverio Truglia, Scott Polach, and Shauna Bittle. Thank you!

To all the musicians I extend my gratitude as well-- Beardog, Big Buildings, The Modern Temper, your energy flew from the stage like some sort of highly contagious disease that I seemed very eager to catch. And Shelley Short and your band, you played a perfect set to take a second and breathe a beer or two after the chaos of the night. Thanks to you all, many of whom I had never even met before. I'd also like to say thank you to all of the special visitors before the event started, and to Michelle Schackmann who helped keep details from slipping through the planning process and promoted with zeal. Michelle has also been accepted to VE and will be leaving for Santiago at the same time as me.

Check out the rest of the photos here on my flickr account. And if you couldn't make it to the event, feel free to make a secure contribution on my donations page. All proceeds still benefit VE and its endeavors.

chicago public radio's Worldview features VE

2006-08-10T23:16:00.000-05:00

Today on Worldview's Global Activism Series Jerome McDonnell invited me to discuss VE's mission and current projects in Chile. We talked about the origin of VE, why the non-profit started, and the upcoming Hello Chile benefit show at the Empty Bottle this Sunday. Give it a listen, especially if you are interested in volunteering or donating.

Reminder: please come to the Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western Ave, this Sunday at 9pm to support VE and help raise funds for its programs.

There will be live music, including Shelley Short, The Modern Temper, Big Buildings, and Beardog. We will also be raffling off a gift certificate to Nacional 27 valued at $300, passes to a documentary about Chile's Salvador Allende and a free membership to the Gene Siskel Film Center, and
a gift basket of spa products courtesy of Benefit Spa. All donations are welcome; don't forget to bring any new or used point-and-shoot digital cameras with their cords to the event.

VE is an NGO that is run solely on the donations raised by volunteers. Voluntarios de la Esperanza (VE) is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization dedicated to bringing equality of opportunity to Chilean children and ending cycles of poverty and child abuse. While VE does not run the children's homes and shelters in which it places volunteers, VE members play a vital role in initiating much needed educational and social programs for the disadvantaged youth involved with the organization. The event this Sunday, Hello Chile, will do more than help bring photography to Chilean kids-- the funds collected will enable VE to become a stronger and even more productive force in Santiago and eventually outside of the city as well. An interinstitutional soccer league, literacy program, and school supplies drive are only some of the projects implemented by VE to improve the lives of hundreds of underprivileged children in Chile. Please visit VE's website for more information.

Please come! Bring everyone you know.

call to visual artists

2006-07-15T07:28:00.000-05:00

August 13th VE will be hosting a benefit at the Empty Bottle (see post below). In addition to the four bands playing, we will also be having a print sale. I would like to invite any and all visual artists to donate a print (or more). If you'd like to participate, please contact me. You don't have to be in Chicago; I can give you a shipping address if need be.

Artwork does not have to be any specific size, although it would be best if you mounted it on some kind of board to eliminate damage. 5x7, 8x10, 11x17 or any variation there of is fine. Including a caption or website information is a good idea so people know who you are and how to find more of your work. I do ask that once you donate the print you completely relinquish it to VE; I will be assigning a very reasonable price to the artwork, as it is a fundraiser, and all unsold artwork will be saved for use of the non-profit.

Please forward this message to others who also may be interested, and make sure you all come to the event in August. Thanks!

benefit announced

2006-06-20T22:26:00.000-05:00

August 13th at the Empty Bottle there will be a benefit show for Voluntarios de la Esperanza (VE), the non-profit with which I'm going to volunteer. With a solid independent music line-up, a print sale featuring the work of local visual artists, and a table of information with an array of buckets for the loads of contributions that are sure to pile in, the evening is set to be the best thing happening on a hot sunday night in Chicago.

If you've never been to the Bottle, it's a few dark rooms of exposed brick with a stage placed on an angle to the long bar where PBR's are cheap and stools never enough. A Ukrianian Village favorite, this cove of a venue has housed many a great show and keeps their calendar full of both bigger names and fresh releases. Our benefit, "Hello Chile", will feature Shelley Short, Modern Temper, Big Buildings, and Beardog, which means you'll be coming early and staying until the end.

What: Hello Chile, a benefit show for disadvantaged youth in Santiago
Who: Shelley Short, Modern Temper, Big Buildings, Beardog
Cost: $10
Note of Interest: I am starting a photography program for children at social risk in Santiago, Chile. Please bring any used / new digital cameras to the event (with their cords). If we get a photo printer before the event (see article below) ink cartridges will become a requested donation-- will keep posted.

Please tell everyone you know-- thanks.

photo printer fund

2006-06-19T19:43:00.000-05:00

Attention all photographers, all image aficionados, all visually minded people and all those who wish they were more inclined to be so: let's pool our resources and purchase a photo printer for a soon-to-be digital photography program in Chile.

Your donation could be $1, it could be $20. Maybe you write a check, maybe you empty your change jar. If you are looking to aid a cause that expands the creativity, skill set and confidence of disadvantaged youth, this is the cause for you. If you are looking for an organization you can trust, where you can watch your contribution in action having a positive affect on real people, this is the cause for you. The truth is, it's a numbers game. The more people that give a small donation, the bigger the end result.

You can visit this donations page to make a contribution-- a big thank you in advance.

polish the chrome, head for the porch

2006-06-10T10:12:00.000-05:00

Summer has taken hold of Chicago: cafes and restaurants have spilled onto the sidewalks, porches and stoops have once again become gathering spots for hours on end, and parks are near capacity with softball, soccer, block parties, picnics, and the like. This will be my third summer living in the city proper, and while I keep saying that I'm going to get out my neighborhood more often, I keep getting pulled into my favorite local rituals-- it's hard to find reasons not to sit under the palm trees at Sultan's market or to stroll around the quiet tree-lined streets of the Ukrainian Village visiting the local dogs. Working full time with projects on the side will do that to you: you get so busy, by the time the weekend comes around, all you'd really like to do is slow down and enjoy your neighborhood.

The season has a different tone to it this year, with nostalgia settling in the creases. I know I'll live in Chicago again, but for now it's a great excuse to keep myself moving about the city. As of last week I've announced to my company that I'll be leaving, a situation saturated with both anxiety and anticipation. I find myself explaining my pending transition to many people, and they offer me mixed reactions. Some are genuinely pleased, many have wished me well, several have been silenced by befuddlement or what seems to be general apathy. The idea of quitting a job and seeking experiences abroad doesn't match up to what some people think of as secure, but I don't know if I've ever had the same definition of security-- besides the fact that their idea of it may have been shattered awhile ago. I do know that perceiving myself in a position where I feel I have options for my future, where I sense an amount of choice in the direction I am pursuing, is one of privilege: up until two years ago, this trip or any like it would have been absolutely out of the question. The plans are in motion, but until August, there's much to do in Chicago.

ve has landed

2006-05-24T20:43:00.000-05:00

New York gave Voluntarios de la Esperanza (VE) a warm welcome last week at our first annual fundraiser. Despite the sporadic thunderstorms, guests still poured into the Museum of Children's Art and brought with them much interest and enthusiasm about the projects underway in Santiago. I didn't have very clear expectations for the trip- I had only been to New York City once before, and had never personally met any of the volunteers associated with the program- but I still have been saying that it proved more successful and exciting than I had imagined.

Please visit a slideshow of photos from the event.

This year's fundraiser showcased artwork created by children in Santiago as well as photographs by Lindy Drew, a current volunteer in Chile right now. Guests sipped Chilean wine, munched on empanadas, mingled to the sounds of an obliging jazz trio, and eventually congregated in the back of the museum for presentations by Luke Winston, director of VE, and a few past volunteers. While we did raffle off some enticing prizes and offer guests homemade friendship bracelets, one of the most significant moments of the evening was the opportunity to explain the mission and the vision of Voluntarios de la Esperanza to a group of people previously rather unfamiliar with the organization- including, to some extent, myself. From the informational material presented about the program to the personal accounts of living in an atmosphere so disparate from previous lifetyles, I felt that the evening afforded me the chance to construct a more dynamic understanding of what VE is trying to accomplish in Chile.

When I first applied to VE my perspective of the organization had been formed solely through the internet. I kept thinking about all of the organizations that exist in areas of the world where technology cannot help connect people, but I knew that I could only handle a certain amount of risk. I wanted to travel to another country, but I preferred to know as much about the situation into which I would be entering before I would go. Both on the website and in New York, I learned that VE does not assist only one orphanage, one home- rather it has taken its relatively fortunate position, including exposure on the internet, and constructed a network of homes such that volunteers and resources move far beyond the central location called Hogar Esperanza. VE is even beginning to reach children in local elementary schools, and aims to assist communities and local families as well as children at social risk. The mission of VE is not to replace primary caregivers, and it is not simply to give assistance. VE seeks and works towards change, education, and support in an effort to provoke growth in a positive direction. Members of the organization are active members of Chilean society, American society, and the greater global society. I have been lucky to have found VE, because the more I learn about the organization, the more I believe in it and its vision.

A Saturday night dinner in a dark Italian restaurant- but paired with Chilean wine- sealed the weekend, leaving me with faces to go with the email addresses and a heightened anticipation for the next few months.

the drive is on

2006-05-14T19:42:00.000-05:00

While the schoolyear may be coming to a close for the kids at Central School in Glencoe, IL, some seventh grade students are asking their peers to think about something other than the fast approaching summer break: digital cameras. This past Monday the drive kicked off, advertised by posters made by the students as well as myself. The drive encourages the children to ask around for any functional digital cameras that may have been old, forgotten, or replaced by newer models. In the fast-paced world of technology, digital gadgets can have short lifespans-- not because they are broken or unusable, but because their owners have moved on to updated models. This is exactly the market for a photo program: rather than forget your digital camera to a remote closet or garbage dump, you can put it to good use and enable underprivileged children to explore creativity through photography.

Friday greeted me with the pivotal news that we have recieved our first donation from the drive. Thanks to the efforts of the principal, the students, and a very special seventh grade teacher, we are on our way to collecting enough materials for an entire orphanage to be able to participate in classes. While I do not know which Hogar (home) I will be placed to work with yet, I know that the children will have lots of fun with these cameras.

In addition to digital cameras I will also be collecting memory cards, card readers, USB cords, a printer, printer paper, and reusable batteries-- basically everything a person would need to produce digital pictures. While computers have been placed in many of the Hogars, I'm sure no one at Voluntarios de la Esperanza would ever turn down the donation. I have heard from many generous people so far-- I feel a momentum that should bring us to a promising place by the end of August.

volunteers converge on new york

2006-05-04T20:24:00.000-05:00

We are now exactly two short weeks away from VE's unveiling in New York: volunteers will be coming from all over to host a first annual fundraiser. You may argue that all weeks are the same length and all weeks consist of 7 days each of 24 hours, but I beg to differ: these weeks will be shorter. This year's event is scheduled to be at the Children's Museum of the Arts and will feature art work from the children down in Santiago, Chile, as well as photographs taken by participants. Past volunteers will share their experiences as well as their hopes for what the organization will do in the future. And, of course, there will be music, food (we're still working on that), and Chilean wine.

Because we are all so far away from each other, we email all instructions, questions, and progress about the event to each other. I've had long distance friendships and relationships before, but this is different, because I've never met these people in person ever. Email lacks tone of voice, humor and emotion in general is difficult to construct when writers and readers have little idea of the other's personality. Yet I hold great anticipation in meeting them, I'm curious, and besides that, my intuition is leading me to believe that I won't be disappointed.

One of my jobs is to get press exposure for the event: I'm aiming high, trying to get the New York Times, the Village Voice, TimeOut, and some other publications to include us in their content. If anyone knows of someone I can send the press release to, please give a holler. I'm beginning to learn that just asking for something is half the battle-- many times people answer "yes." I'm really going to put this hypothesis to the test over the next few months, and let's see how many yes's come our way. Speaking of, can anyone in New York spare some delicious empanadas for our event???

el día del niño

2006-04-29T21:56:00.000-05:00

This past week the Institute of Latin Progress / Instituto del Progreso Latino celebrated The day of the Child / El Día del Niño. Based in Chicago's Pilsen neighborhood, this organization offers educational and professional resources to Latino immigrants and their families from ESL classes to citizenship workshops. Even though I haven't been volunteering at the center for long, I feel very welcome in the colorfully painted halls and I enjoy the friendly and open atmosphere of the community.

Most recently I've been spending time with the 4 and 5 year-olds while their parents are in class. While it's typical to spend time singing songs, practicing our ability to share with others, and fine tuning our skill with markers and scissors, this Thursday the kids were rallied outside in the play area for a very special treat: piñatas. We watched as the bolder, older kids jumped and laughed as they chased the prize with a bat, and we cheered supportively when the more courageous younger kids cautiously stepped up for the challenge. Some may have preferred the pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey, but everyone flew into a scramble when the candy started falling.

As I assist the teacher in herding the children from outside to inside, and as I encourage them to build their house of blocks even larger or reassure them that their spilled orange juice is really not that big of a deal, I find myself trying to remember to use the correct form of the verb so that I'm not juse offering my words to one of them, but to all of them. I find myself wondering how many times I'll accidentally say "frases" instead of "fresas" (because who would want "sentences" kept off their cake when it's "strawberries" they don't like) and feeling thankful that these most honest and uninhibited 5 year-olds have no problem correcting me every time.

Meanwhile preparations for the summer and fall continue to move forward. This week marks the purchase of my ticket, a phone call that momentarily prompted a few minutes of unexpected light-headedness, as well as the acceptance by a Chicago school to host a digital camera in the name of Voluntarios de la Esperanza (VE). The intertia is beginning to work, I just need to maintain it carrying us in a positive direction: I have every intention of keeping it so.

plans begin to take form

2006-04-23T22:13:00.002-05:00

Plane tickets, travel logistics, and fundraising ideas have been taking over any free time I might have had these days. Chicago is in full spring mode now, and the streets are full of people milling about at practically any time of day. All outdoor seating has been reinstated along the sidewalks, a sure sign that warm weather is here to stay -- I just hope it's true. I have realized that my timing for the switch from North to South America could not have been better: I will trade in winter for summer, which will earn me essentially three summers in a row.

I have learned that Voluntarios de la Esperanza will be having a fundraiser in New York on May 18th; details will follow. In addition to having many past participants present, presenting stories from their times in Santiago, there will be photographs and children's art displayed. The festivities will be at a children's art gallery in Manhattan, and we are hoping for a large turnout.

Meanwhile I have, with the friendly guidance of my fundraising captain, constructed a fundraising webpage where anybody can donate any amount to Voluntarios de la Esperanza. I have decided that my goal, from now until the day I come back from Chile, will be to raise $5,000 for the organization. In addition, because I would like to be very involved with installing a photography program wherever I am placed, I am determined to collect at least 40 point-and-shoot digital cameras. It's about four months to departure... let's see what we can make happen.

and so it begins

2006-04-15T00:28:00.000-05:00

Spring has landed in Chicago. It happened rather suddenly for me as I was out of town this past weekend, which is precisely when it arrived. Now it's here, and with it the energy that we've been missing all winter.

I received word on Sunday night that I've been accepted into Voluntarios de la Esperanza, a volunteer organization that serves youth in Santiago, Chile. I responded immediately, accepting my acceptance. And so it begins.