Orphans' photos of daily life

Cameras empowered children to tell about their lives

“This is Steraton. He is 14 years old. This child is employed to take care of this business. He came from a village for this purpose. He is an orphan. The use of child labour is not good.” Photo: Dennis, 18 years

The 22^nd of February 2006 was a day of celebration for the orphans of Friends of Don Bosco (FDB) and Friends of Tanzania (FOT), Dar es Salaam. This was the day where a photo exhibition containing their own photos where opened to the public, with the kids themselves entertaining the many guests with ‘ngoma’ and singing.

Behind the project called Kuwa Thamani (Being Worthy) is a project group from Tanzania Youth Exchange Network, financially supported by Tanzania Cultural Trust Fund. The aims of the project are to give children, especially marginalized children, a voice and the experience that they have skills and resources and are worth listening to. At the same time showing society that this group has potentials and can contribute to society, in spite of what is often assumed.

15 girls and boys were given cheap cameras and where asked to depict their lives and environment. The result was interesting, eye opening and touching. One example is Veronica Daniel from FDB who took a picture of a goat and a sheep. She says: “These are different animals – a goat and a sheep from FDB. Although they are different they always like to stay together, as if they where the same race. I’m so glad to see the different animals work together.”

The children received one day of training on how to handle a camera and how to take good photos. They had two days to shoot what grabbed their eyes. Dennis from Mbuharati for example, describes the problem of water shortage. One picture shows two women carrying water buckets. Dennis explains: “There is a problem of water in Mbuharati Barafu. The women have big problems in getting water. The have to go very far to get it, 2-3 km. We would like to have water supplied. The end of the water was in 1997.”

The children had to present their photos and explain to the rest the reasons behind. Each child selected two photos for the exhibition.

Bringing together two different groups of children showed one of the major benefits, as the children stressed. Also, the fact that they where shown trust by borrowing the cameras without conditions made them feel empowered. Furthermore, we got many positive responses from the public. A somewhat unexpected, but evident benefit is the friendship and cooperation between the two organisations have continued, such as FDB hosting social research students from FOT, and FDB helping FOT at their medical camp. This is the true spirit of partnership.

“We believe that the good results are due to the effort to include all parties in the creation and process of the project and the fact that the children worked together and had to take their own decisions and reflect on them”, says Steven Milambo from the project group.

“In short, children are good story tellers and have good observations about society. We just need to listen.”

“The pollution of the environment is a big problem for everybody, all over the world. I took this picture to prevent pollution.” Photo: Happy,13 years