Community-Based Media & Storytelling Organizations

Adobe Youth Voices (youthvoices.adobe.com) provides youth in underserved communities around the globe with the 21st century tools, including photography and other media arts, to communicate their ideas, exhibit their potential and take action in their communities.

AjA Project (www.ajaproject.org) is a nonprofit organization that provides media arts and photography-based educational programs to youth, particularly refugees and immigrants, around the world.

Barefoot Workshops (www.barefootworkshops.org) is a media based not-for-profit organization where adults and youth are taught video, photography, music, and art as a way to document their surroundings, make change in the world, and most importantly, make change within themselves.

BRIDGES to Understanding (www.bridgesweb.org) is a Seattle-based organization that uses digital technology and the art of storytelling to empower and unite youth worldwide, enhance cross-cultural understanding and build global citizenship.

Capture Wales (www.bbc.co.uk/wales/audiovideo/sites/galleries/pages/capturewales.shtml) is a digital storytelling project run by the BBC.

The Center for Digital Storytelling (www.storycenter.org) is an international not-for-profit community arts organization rooted in the craft of personal storytelling. They assist youth and adults around the world in using media tools to share, record, and value stories from their lives, in ways that promote artistic expression, health and well being, and justice.

Center for Documentary Studies’ Literacy Through Photography Project (cds.aas.duke.edu/ltp/index.html) encourages children to explore their world through photography, and then to use their images as catalysts for verbal and written expression. This site offers lots of good information about Wendy Ewald’s community photography projects and related resources.

The Chiapas Photography Project (www.chiapasphoto.org) is an artistic project by and for indigenous photographers in Chiapas. It has four main activities: education, collection, outreach, and research.

Community Photography Project (www.community-photography.com) is a youth photography project based in Denver, Colorado.

Conversations with the Earth (www.conversationsearth.org) is an indigenous-led multimedia initiative that amplifies indigenous voices in the global discourse on climate change.

Creative Narrations (www.creativenarrations.net) provides organizations and individuals with the ability to document and represent the voices and images of change through narrative, technology and community development.

Critical Exposure (www.criticalexposure.org) is a DC-based organization that helps students and organizations use documentary photography and other tools to advocate more effectively for excellence and equity in public education.

Displacements (www.displacements.info) is a multidisciplinary project focusing on the experiences of refugees living in different situations. Workshops provide participants with access to creative media, including photography, writing, video, and sound. Through art the project hopes to engage its participants as individuals in a civic process, as well as empowering them through self-expression and the validation of their personal stories.

Downtown Aurora Visual Arts (www.davarts.org/art_stories.html) is a youth arts center that offers digital storytelling and other arts workshops in Aurora, Colorado.

The Educational Video Center (www.evc.org) is a non-profit youth media organization dedicated to teaching documentary video as a means to develop the artistic, critical literacy, and career skills of young people, while nurturing their idealism and commitment to social change.

Finding Voice Project (www.findingvoiceproject.org) is an innovative literacy and visual arts program in Tucson dedicated to helping refugee and immigrant youth in ESL classes develop their literacy and second language skills by researching, photographing, writing, and speaking out about critical social issues in their lives and communities.

First Exposures (www.sfcamerawork.org/mentoring.html) is a mentoring/photographic education program for young people in San Francisco sponsored by SF Camerawork.

Focus on Mentoring (www.focusonmentoring.org) is a program teaching photojournalism to youth in public housing.

FOCUS (focusyouthphoto.org) is a youth photography program committed to offering interdisciplinary, photo-based education to young people from economically challenged communities in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Fotokids (www.fotokids.org) helps Central American youth from poor barrios develop useful, employable skills as a means to self-exploration, expression, and discovery. Through intensive, long-term personal relationships with teachers and mentors, participating children learn to use photography, creative writing, and computers as tools to examine their lives, families, communities and environment bridging the global technology divide.

Fresh Eyes Project (www.fresheyesproject.org) uses digital photography to help incarcerated juveniles successfully re-enter society.

Fundación ph15 (www.ph15.org.ar) is a Buenos Aires-based organization that offers underserved kids and adolescents the opportunity to express their personal views through photography.

Hello Neighbor (www.helloneighborproject.org) is a Portland-based project that uses photography by youth to create dialogue about community.

Image Magica (www.imagemagica.org) is an organization based in Sao Paulo, Brazil that teaches documentary photography to youth and other members of the community.

In Our Village (www.inourvillage.org) is youth photography and video project in Kenya organized by the U.S.-based nonprofit, What Kids Can Do.

The In-Sight Photography Project (www.insight-photography.org) is based in Brattleboro, VT and provides youth with a creative outlet to develop a visual language that will provide them tools to communicate with others while discovering something about themselves.

The Institute for Photographic Empowerment (www.joinipe.org) supports the study and practice of participant–produced documentary projects in photography, film, and digital media.

The Inuusivut Project (www.isuma.tv/hi/en/inuusivut) is based in Nunavut, Canada and offers youth the skills to learn, document and share – through a variety of multimedia techniques – how Inuit perceive, express, develop, foster and promote mental health.

Kids with Cameras (www.kids-with-cameras.org) is a nonprofit organization that teaches photography to marginalized children in communities around the world.

Kids with Cameras (www.geocities.com/kidswithcameras) is a photographic educational program promoting visual cultural exchange in Mbare, Zimbabwe. Kids from Mbare participate in workshops on photography, art, communication and creativity.

Mass IMPACT (www.massimpact.org/projects/digital_storytelling/index.shtml) offers digital story workshops to youth, community groups and organizations.

My Story (www.mystoryworkshops.org) is a Portland-based nonprofit organization that offers photography workshops for youth.

Peace in Focus (www.peaceinfocus.org) works to build critical life skills and healthy relationships among youth from communities around the world afflicted by violence, inequality, and transition. Through collaborative photography and leadership training programs, underprivileged youth develop innovative tools to transform conflict and advocate for social change in their communities.

Photo Exchangers (www.photoexchangers.net) is a cross-cultural photo exchange project between youth in the US and Ghana.

Photovoice (www.photovoice.com) is a participatory photography methodology developed by Dr. Caroline Wang at the University of Michigan. She and many others have applied this methodology to public health projects in the US and worldwide.

PhotoVoice (www.photovoice.org) is a UK-based organization that helps marginalized communities express their voices through documentary photography.

Photovoices International (www.photovoicesinternational.org) is an international program that provides photography training for people to document important issues in their lives like the state of the natural environment, what they value about traditional culture and to record community strengths and challenges.

Picture this Project (www.picturethisprojects.org) is a Chicago-based nonprofit organization dedicated to teaching photography to youth.

Rehabilitation Through Photography (www.rtphoto.org) harnesses the wonder and the beauty of photography to help heal body and spirit.  Founded almost 70 years ago as a humanitarian response to World War II and to help soldiers and veterans,  RTP now provides photography instruction and programs to the physically and emotionally handicapped, the elderly, at-risk youth, the economically disadvantaged, the homeless and the visually impaired.

Seeing Beyond Sight (www.seeingbeyondsight.org) is a photography project that works with blind teenagers.

Shoot Nations (www.shootnations.org) is a joint partnership between Plan UK and Shoot Experience that sponsors an international youth photography competition to encourage young people to express their thoughts on global issues through photography and drawings.

Shootback Project (www.shootbacknow.org) is a youth photography project based in the slums of Nairobi, Kenya.

Silence Speaks (www.silencespeaks.org) is an international digital storytelling initiative offering a safe, supportive environment for telling stories that all too often remain unspoken.

Stories for Change (www.storiesforchange.net) is a website that offers a wealth of digital storytelling resources and stories.

Through the Eyes of Children (www.rwandaproject.org) is a youth photo project working with orphaned children in Rwanda.

Venice Arts (venice-arts.org) is an LA-based organization that ignites low-income and underrepresented youths’ imagination, mentors their creativity, and expands their sense of possibility through media–based arts education programs.

Video Volunteers (www.videovolunteers.org) is a global social media network, which provides solutions-based media for marginalized and poor communities around the world.

VOICES, Inc. (www.voicesinc.org) is a nonprofit organization in Tucson that mentors low-income youth to tell their personal, family, neighborhood, tribal, and community stories so they can strengthen their cognitive, artistic, emotional, leadership, and higher education skills.

Young Photographers Allliance (www.youngphotographersalliance.org) connects young photographers with the inspiration, resources and contacts they need to build successful and sustainable careers as the great artists and communicators of the future.

Youth in Focus (www.youthinfocus.org) is a Seattle-based youth development program that offers a variety of photography classes, service learning opportunities and entrepreneurial projects for youth.

Youth CineMedia (www.youthcinemedia.org) utilizes state-of-the-art technology to help teach teenagers the fundamentals of digital video, music production, photography and other multimedia. YCM provides youth in the Santa Barbara County region with the means to create inspiring, thought-provoking media that promotes dialogue and social change, as well as the training, knowledge and relationships that help foster expression and confidence.

Zamni Lakay (www.zanmilakay.org/Photography.html) is a non-profit organization dedicated to improving the quality of life for current and former street children in Haiti by providing educational and economic opportunities, including photography workshops, to these children.