Inclusive Photography for Youth worked with the youth workers and young people to promote the inclusion by making the disadvantaged young people visible through artistic tools and giving them opportunity to raise their voice and present their ideas through photography tools. Photography is most common tool to promote the inclusion and make the stories more visible that are overlooked in the societies. The project aimed to develop tools for youth workers to engage with excluded and marginalized young people by using photography to promote the active citizenship and inclusion of young people while making young people to document and raise their voices towards to issues that they see in their own communities.
During the project, we have implemented set of activities targeting the young people and local communities to make the stories of young people visible as well as the issues in the local communities from poverty to the discrimination. Within the project, we have as well implemented an exhibition in every country with the pictures that are produced during the implementation of the project. The photography as a tool of the inclusion idea was mainstreamed through the project to promote and engage young people in a meaningful way to increase their involvement in the communities. Meanwhile, we have implemented activities and developed tools for youth workers to implement local photo walk activities to promote inclusion and the visibility of the issues that the young people sees in their own communities.
The specific objectives of the project :
- To provide tools for youth workers to make them able for engaging young people to raise their voices through photography tools such as visual story telling, photovoice methodology
- To document the issues of the young people in participating countries from the perspective of young people through photo walk workshops
- To increase the skills of young people to become changemakers in their own communities through the usage of photovoice, photography and documentary photography techniques
- To create an awareness about the issues of young people by providing space for young people in the participating countries as well as through implementation of exhibitions
During the local photowalk activities, the young people developed pictures and narrate the stories from their perspectives to increase the visibility of the issues in their own communities. As a result, the project produced over 320 photo portfolios ( 80 per country ) and developed a photobook along with this toolbox with the stories of the young people that they have created during the implementation of the project.
We wanted to introduce the inclusive photography to the young people to make them aware the power of images and the reflexivity of the photography concerning inclusion of the communities that are not visible in our countries. The project reached over 1000 people through the exhibitions and the implemented series of actions.
This toolbox is consisted of theoretical information concerning inclusive photography and implementation in youth work, the training plans for the implementation of the local activities and the inclusive photography as well as the monitoring and evaluation of the local activities and training for youth workers implemented in September 2023 with the methods to be guiding material for the organizations to implement such activities with young people to qualify youth workers.
We hope that this toolbox will inspire and make the youth workers and young people use photography to promote inclusion in their own communities.
