About Our PhotoVoice Project

Background

Learning Life’s Citizen Diplomacy Initiative (CDI) engages lower-income American families, starting in Washington D.C., in live internet dialogues and project collaborations with lower-income families in other nations to nurture more caring and capable global citizens.   Our photovoice project is the first of a series of international CDI projects.  The electronic photo album that results from this first project will form part of a growing portfolio of products – photo albums, art works, videos, research reports, published articles, etc. — documenting our families’ local community engagement, international collaborations, and developing global knowledge, skills, attitudes and connections.

Project Description

James practices photographyThis first project’s outcome will be an album of selected photos from participating families in the USA, Senegal and Jordan.  To create the album, the families first go into their community to take some initial photos in answer to the project question “what is the nature of your community?”  Learning Life then provides the families with some training in photography, and the families take a second round of community photos.  The two rounds of photos before and after training allow us to to assess if we see any improvements in the quality of each family’s photos resulting from the training.

The photos are posted to Learning Life’s CDI Facebook group for all our families and volunteers to see and comment on wherever they are in the world.  Once all the families have taken their community photos, each family votes on the photos they like best.  Their votes help determine which photos end up in the final electronic album.  That album compares the families’ best photos, organized by topic, taken from their different standpoints in the world.  We anticipate that this initial photovoice project will identify community issues to explore and address in subsequent CDI project collaborations.

As CDI expands, and more families in more communities across the world complete their own photovoice projects, we will gather selected photos in answer to the same community question above in an album at our CDI Facebook group.  That album will give a view of a growing number of communities worldwide from the vantage points of our CDI participants.

Project Goals
  1. Improve project participants’ photography skills.
  2. Deepen participants’ knowledge of and interest in learning about the world.
  3. Identify community issues for CDI participants to explore in follow-up projects.
Learn more

Interested in learning more, or getting involved in CDI as a family or volunteer?  Contact us at email@learninglife.info.