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November 20, 2009 |
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Created and Maintained by: The Photoimaging Information Council |
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by Lindy Drew |
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Since December 2005, I have been volunteering at Hogar Nuestra Señora de la Paz (NSDLP) through the non-profit organization VEGlobal (www.ve-global.org). The home is a government funded orphanage on the outskirts of Santiago, Chile that houses up to 30 girls. Every 3 months volunteers come from all over the world to work with Voluntarios de la Esperanza (Volunteers of Hope) in a network of 14 orphanages, schools, and community centers. Some stay up to 1 or 2 years helping these children grow while supporting their institutions. The idea of doing this type of outreach is to achieve equality of opportunity in Chile and generate changes in the societal structures that cause and perpetuate poverty and child abuse.  Posters of the Spanish alphabet and multiplication tables are hung on the girls’ walls to create a more personalized learning environment and encourage them to study. © 2007 Lindy Drew
 The younger girls in their bedroom with their walls covered in posters, paint, and personal messages to all the people they love. © 2007 Lindy Drew
Hogar NSDLP was founded in 1983 to provide girls whose rights have been violated with a temporary home while the staff works to reunite the kids with their families. The girls that live here are between 5 and 19 years old. They are passionate, intelligent, loving, and affectionate. A normal day at the hogar (home) means picking them up from school, helping them with their homework, and just sharing yourself so they can have one on one time with an adult. Other days, volunteers attend parent teacher conferences, take the kids on fieldtrips in the city, or accompany them to special outings like to the community pool. The journey is just getting to know the kids through hearing their stories, watching them grow, studying their behavior, and teaching them how to read in Spanish while they teach you how to speak it. The job is the commitment, to come back week after week, to form relationships, to learn who these little personalities are, how they live together, and what it means to be in a home when your parents are not around because they mistreated you or just cannot take care of you.  On a fieldtrip to Santiago’s national art museum to see photographer Elliott Erwitt’s exhibit. © 2007 Lindy Drew
 After 23 years, and hundreds of kids who have lived at the home, couches, tables, beds and other furniture like this park bench are falling apart and need to be replaced. © 2007 Lindy Drew
 Posing in their doll house. © 2007 Lindy Drew
Seeing as how these kids have little interest, motivation, and solid direction in class, they are stubborn when it comes to learning basic subjects. Their public school lacks structure and funding. Homework consists of repetitively writing numbers in blank notebooks or cutting and pasting pictures from old textbooks into their workbooks. Some of the kids hardly know how to read or recite the Spanish alphabet and it is challenging to get the girls to study topics related to school because they lack patience, do not see the benefits, or do not have an adult encouraging them to excel. They do however enjoy attempting to sing American pop culture songs, playing sports, and doing arts and crafts. Give them a camera and their eyes open wide and engaging, eager to click away at anything that gets their attention. With that in mind, I searched for support to start a camera program for the girls to allow them to explore the creativity, enjoyment, and importance of photography while bringing awareness and support to the orphanage.  Hiding behind a stuffed animal from the Plaza Sesamo (Sesame Street). © 2007 Lindy Drew
 At MIM, an Interactive Science Museum. © 2007 Lindy Drew
 Practicing multiplication together. © 2007 Lindy Drew
Thanks to a generous donation through the joint sponsorship of PENTAX and TakeGreatPictures.com, VEGlobal’s Photography In Motion project will allow the girls at NSDLP to photograph with 5 PENTAX Optio E10 digital cameras over a 2-month period. They will learn about the history of photography, its influences, and how to operate and manipulate the cameras while photographing inside their community and around Santiago. They can take pictures of themselves and each other while also gaining a motivation that can transfer to other educational areas, encouraging them to work harder in school by teaching them how to work with computers, exposing them to technology, and expanding their communication, analytical, and self-expression skills. They will shoot a few times a week with one day set aside for editing their work in Photoshop at their school’s computer facility. Upon completion, we hope to share the work in an exhibition and in print. There is also the opportunity to continue the program at this particular hogar or have a traveling camera program so that the photography workshop can reach other kids, too.  Holding a poster from a donation made through a US school supply company. The hogar relies on donations from Chile and other countries thanks to the international volunteer network. © 2007 Lindy Drew
 At MIM, an Interactive Science Museum. © 2007 Lindy Drew
Like many kids in the system who have been abandoned or abused, the girls act out in response to the way they have been treated and sometimes just because they are bored or do not know better. They can be aggressive and violent because of their histories, lack of structure in the hogar, and age hierarchy. They lash out verbally and physically towards themselves and especially towards each other. They eat whatever they can get their hands on to feed a hunger that is deeper than their stomachs, pierce themselves with safety pins like they are resistant to pain, and easily start fights, which are all manifestations of something bigger. The adults that work at the orphanage are so preoccupied with juggling the immediate needs of the institution, families, and kids, that there is not enough time or resources to even teach the girls important behavioral and life lessons that mom and dad should be teaching.  Math homework on this day means writing numbers 200-500. © 2007 Lindy Drew
 With space for up to 30 girls, laundry is a daily chore for the tías. At the moment, the hogar relies on one laundry machine to wash clothes, sheets, and blankets for everyone. © 2007 Lindy Drew
 The living room in the blue house. © 2007 Lindy Drew
On top of this, the orphanage is a meager facility, under funded, understaffed, in need of donations and support. Apart from food and clothes for the girls, the hogar must find new furniture, appliances, lighting fixtures, and gardening tools so that the facility can function as a home for these kids and the property can be maintained. The government organization and foundation that support the hogar can only give so much. Since nobody has the resources to find these necessities, perhaps the hogar just needs a more creative approach. Perhaps the photography the kids create can in turn create a better place for them to live.  The living room in the Pink House. © 2007 Lindy Drew
 Some girls have parents that visit often. Others have madrinas (adoptive mothers) from the community that take care of them so the kids have a chance to get out of the hogar on the weekends and for special holidays. © 2007 Lindy Drew
 Playing in the plaza in the hogar’s backyard. © 2007 Lindy Drew
Originally, my intention was to document the girls to raise awareness and help the hogar through picture taking while growing as a photographer. As my role as a volunteer became more defined to include confidante, comforter, big sister, playmate, and mentor, my role as a photographer strengthened to become an analyst, humanitarian, and storyteller. I finished my own personal project, but wanted to do something big for the girls that could make them see and look at themselves and the world differently. I thought that they would run with the opportunity to explore other ways of expressing themselves, to have a chance to be interested in something, to improve the home they have no choice to live in for the time being. Since the girls love being in front of the camera as well as behind it, it seemed right to start the Photography in Motion project with them.  Getting familiar with using the camera. © 2007 Lindy Drew
 The girls with the hogar director. Instead of saying “cheese,” in English they say “whisky!” here in Spanish. © 2007 Lindy Drew
 Learning how to take pictures with the help of my DSLR. © 2007 Lindy Drew
With so much to document and so much to learn from the process of making pictures, this project sets out to bring cameras and the art of photography to the hands of Chilean children. By letting the girls play the role of photographer, they can get lost in a rewarding activity as their stories are told from their own point of view, capturing what life is like for them and what life is like here in Chile.  Watching a slideshow of pictures of themselves from summer camp. They really like the apple that lights up on the front of MAC computers. © 2007 Lindy Drew
 Boredom is one of the worst feelings in the hogar. The girls enjoy arts and crafts and playing soccer and volleyball. The Photography In Motion program should be an entertaining activity for them. © 2007 Lindy Drew
 Posing for a picture in the plaza. The hogar is at the base of the Andes Mountains. © 2007 Lindy Drew
The Photographer / Instructor Lindy Drew is a freelance documentary and street photographer. She studied at The University of Arizona and at The School of the International Center of Photography in New York City. She came to South America on a personal journey to explore the land and its inhabitants through the lens. Since December 2005, she has been working in Santiago de Chile as a volunteer at a home for girls through the non-profit organization VEGlobal. Her work has been exhibited in NY, Tucson, Chicago, Seattle, and Santiago and she has been published in The Village Voice and Transitions Abroad Magazine. To see more of her work and read of her experiences in the hogar, please visit her homepage and blog at: www.lindydrew.com  Nuestra Señora de la Paz is located a 15 minute bus ride from the metro and another 45 minutes on the metro to the city’s center. There is a doorbell at the front gate, but the girls prefer to yell, “la puerta!” until someone comes to open it. © 2007 Lindy Drew
 Out of respect, Chileans refers to someone older than them as a tía (aunt) or tío (uncle). The tías are the mothers of the house at the hogar and take on much more responsibility that their salaries reflect. Tía Carmen sleeps at the hogar from Monday through Friday and has been caring for the girls for the past year. © 2007 Lindy Drew
 There is always time to play in between changing their clothes from school and starting homework. © 2007 Lindy Drew
 Living in a hogar is hard and the children want to go home. Some parents are able to take their children back whereas others will not be reunited. © 2007 Lindy Drew
 During the cold season it rains all the time, but one day this year left the playground blanketed in snow. © 2007 Lindy Drew
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