PhotoVoice and Visual Story Telling for Youthworkers

“To take a picture is to have an interest in things as they are, in the status quo remaining unchanged (at least for as long as it takes to get a “good” picture), to be in complicity with whatever makes a subject interesting, worth photographing-including, when that is the interest, another person’s pain or misfortune.” says Susan Sonntag when she talks about the photography. From this perspective, we can argue that, when we make photos, we take an interest the another person’s life but we put our perspective through the biases that we have rooted in our identities. Therefore, to discuss about the inclusive photography and making the photography inclusive, we have to understand the vulnerability, the mutability and the circumstances of the picture that are developed and created. Henceforth, when we talk about the inclusivity of the pictures that we are taking, the person who is photographed should participate in the process fully as the agency rather than passively. The young people can engage the others to tell the stories by making them qualified with the photographic skills and photovoice methodology to promote the issues that they see important in their communities.  

In both aspects, we argue that, the photography in youth work should be constructed in a way inclusive as well as participatory that young people develop the products and engage with their own communities to document the experiences in a way, how they see fit. Even though photography but empowers the young people in terms of digital skills and to document the issues that they see important in their surrounding, the youth workers do not have enough skills to implement PhotoVoice activities. In addition to that, visual storytelling is not really used by the youth NGOs to promote and implement advocacy activities to make the issues of young people visible in the communities. We have built this training course to promote the young people’s involvement with photography while increasing the skills of youth workers to implement such activities. Thus, the project is highly related as well with the European Youth Goals concerning to the Goal “Space and Participation for All” by providing a space for young people to practice their skills in photography to raise their voices while increasing youth workers capacity to implement such activities in their own communities.  

• During the project, we will work on three themes : photovoice methodology (photography), visual storytelling ( narration and photography ) and inclusion of the young people with fewer opportunities. The project will directly increase the capacities of the youth organizations and youth workers involved due to its construction and the outputs of the project will contribute to the social change due to the structure of PhotoVoice activity and implementing visual storytelling ways to promote these issues.  

• The objectives of the project are;  

• - To qualify the youth workers as PhotoVoice practicioners to implement photovoice activities for promoting the issues of young people

• - To create an awareness on the usage of photovoice methodology to increase the visibility of the issues of the young people in the communities

• - To increase the attractiveness of the participating organizations by making them able to implement photovice and visual storytelling programmes for the young people and people with fewer opportunities

• - To provide a space to develop partnerships in the field of photography and youth work