PhotoVoice

During May and June of 2008, we asked a group adult sponsors to gather young people from different areas of the county to consider and then reveal through pictures the everyday realities that both support youth and discourage them.

Called 'PhotoVoice,' this technique of gathering information and expressing opinion has been used all over the world, by many different groups, usually as a way of raising community awareness and promoting positive change.

Trained in simple photographic techniques and given cameras, young people in Windham County went out into their communities to capture the images that tell their personal stories. The goal was to help local policymakers understand the reality as young people themselves perceive it, not as adults perceive it.

We want to thank the adult sponsors and the photographers in the Windham Youth PhotoVoice project: West River Valley: Lori Greenberg from Leyland and Gray Union High School and Cooper Feiner-Homer; Brattleboro: Ricky Davidson from the Boys and Girls Club of Brattleboro and Autumn Kendell, Zach Gilbeau, and Ann-Marie Bliss; Bellows Falls: Ellenka Wasung-Lott from the Boys and Girls Club and Danielle Southwell from Youth Services Inc., and Crystal Thomson, Jacqueline Cantor and Abi Baker; and Wilmington: Shelly Park, Sarah Dumaine, Michael Squiers, and Tony Roy.

See the online version of our Youth ImPact PhotoVoice Project here.

Interested in knowing more about how we conducted the PhotoVoice project? See a curriculum, with photos from the project, here.