Outreach Program
We are dedicated to utilizing the power of photography to further deep-thinking, communication, and action. Our online content has a variety of educational applications, and our collaborative partnerships pursue results that can be used for replication, adaptation, and inspiration.
Explore our Outreach Program Partners below:
Our Democracy Project
The VII Foundation
Lost Rolls America / Generation Human Rights
Photoville
Ashoka U InSights: Past, Present, and Future Self Through Photography
Ashoka U: Self Discovery Through Photography Webinar
Global Nomads Group
CatchLight
Blue Earth Alliance
Foundry Photojournalism Workshops
The Eddie Adams Workshop
The Alexia
In partnership with Our Democracy Project and the National Writing Project, PhotoWings is pleased to share a toolkit and launch a student/community publication site that lets students explore the question, “What does democracy look like in your individual lives and communities?” The toolkit and site will enable a broad and inclusive conversation through visual storytelling and conversations about our democracy.
The Lost Rolls America project opens the magical reencounter with the past to anyone who possesses unprocessed film rolls. Contributors provide one roll of film, which is developed and scanned free of charge by FUJIFILM North America Corporation, and made available back to them. Participants then choose one image and, in a small write-up, explore the meaning of the photo and the significance of re-viewing a piece of their personal, sometimes lost past. Ultimately, these observations offer points of identification, through descriptions of similar memories or associations, for other viewers of this collective experience.
PHOTOVILLE is New York City’s FREE premier photo destination. The annual festival is a modular venue built from re-purposed shipping containers. By creating a physical platform for photographers of all stripes to come together and interact, Photoville provides a unique opportunity to engage with a diverse audience — a veritable cross-section of the world’s photographic community.
Following our Self-Discovery Through Photography webinar, the partnership of PhotoWings and Ashoka U announced InSights: Past, Present, and Future Self through Photography grants in September 2013. Working with nine prominent, grant-winning university communities from the 24 world-wide Ashoka U Campuses — including Brown, Cornell, New School, Ryerson, and Tulane — we helped foster and mentor campus projects that utilize the power of photography. The goal of InSights is to demonstrate ways that photography and the ideas around it could act as conversation starters in cross-disciplinary, cross-cultural, and cross-generational contexts, engaging communities and catalyzing social change.
A collection of educators and students fostering dialogue and understanding among the world's youth. Global Nomads Group works at the intersection of cultural exchange, international education, and conflict resolution. Technology is leveraged to enable conversation between middle school and high school students who otherwise would not meet. These exchanges promote empathy, peace, and build 21st century workforce skills. PhotoWings is partnering with Global Nomads Group to create a photography-based curriculum for students as it scales its efforts from the individual school the district level.
Catchlight believes it has never been more important to use the power of photography to drive measurable social change. They identify innovative visual storytellers worldwide, bringing resources and community together to direct their work towards critical social issues, driving ENGAGEMENT, AWARENESS and IMPACT.
Collaborations for Cause is a two-day event that brings together cutting-edge content producers and front-line organizations for an exploration of how to harness the power of the evolving media landscape. Presented by Blue Earth Alliance, the third annual conference builds upon the organization's 18-year history of facilitating issue-driven visual storytelling. PhotoWings is honored to partner with Blue Earth Alliance and Collaborations for Cause, providing video documentation of panels and presentations from the conference.
Photojournalism workshops that bring some of the world's most-respected photojournalists to developing countries to train majority world students in visual storytelling and to foster their ability and agency to tell their own stories and document their own communities. PhotoWings is a primary funder of the Foundry Workshops and a proud partner of this diverse and emerging international community.
The Eddie Adams Workshop is an intense four-day gathering of the top photography professionals, along with 100 carefully selected students. The photography workshop is tuition-free, and the students are chosen based on the merit of their portfolios. PhotoWings is a proud supporter of Eddie Adams Workshop, and has created a series of twenty reflective interviews with the renowned faculty and staff.
The Alexia Foundation promotes the power of photojournalism to give voice to social justice, to respect history lest it be forgotten and to understand cultural difference as our strength—not our weakness. Through grants, scholarships and special projects, The Alexia Foundation supports photographers as agents for social change.
At a time when many other resources have dwindled, The Alexia Foundation, a 501(c)(3) organization, remains unwavering in its commitment to support photojournalism on academic and professional levels. The foundation believes that there is no stronger force in bringing us closer to the world we inhabit.
“War is only half the story.” The Aftermath Project seeks to help broaden the public’s understanding of war and promote peace, through international exhibitions and educational outreach. PhotoWings supported the creation of The Aftermath Project website, mobile app, educational programming and the publication of "War is Only Half the Story", an annually-published book given to policy makers, journalism schools, high school educators, curators, photo-editors and industry professionals.
Since 2008, the Dublin City University’s Intergenerational Learning Programme has engaged older learners from the wider community and DCU students in teaching and learning together. As an Insights grant winner, DCU connected older and younger learners who engaged in intergenerational storytelling inspired by personal photographs. PhotoWings funding now allows program participants to utilize photography in a series of activities designed to further connect generations through first-hand cross-cultural learning, deep communication and legacy related to the Irish diaspora.
#THX2 – GALEWiLL Center for Opportunity and Progress
We are partnering to create two #thx2 projects utilizing photography as a means to reflect on our station in life, those who helped get us to where we are and where we hope to go. Research suggests that if people personally connect by reflecting on their own life experience or that of someone they respect or admire, their attitudes and behavior will change. This is the nexus of the #thx2 project. The first project is our #thx2 social media campaign. A second project emphasizes deep communication and mentorship by going deeper, in schools and major organizations, to utilize the empathetic power of pictures and the reflection on life experience from someone further along. This process connects people deeply on a number of levels as participants synthesize and discuss the process plus outcomes gained which can ripple outward to others achieving a further understanding of the power of mentors or influencers.
Following on the success of the PhotoWings/Ashoka U Insights Grant project "Windows from Prison" at George Mason University (GMU), the PhotoWings Outreach Program has funded community outreach and documentation of a second iteration of the project in Richmond, Virginia. PhotoWings has also provided funding for a strategic Toolkit that will offer collaborative solutions used by the "Windows from Prison" organizers to implement the project in Richmond and other locations (GMU, Parsons School of Design and the University of Michigan).
LOOK3 Festival of the Photograph is a celebration of photography, created by photographers, for those who share a passion for the still image. The Festival features exhibits and on-stage appearances of three “INsight” photographers, as well as exhibitions, outdoor projections, workshops and interviews over three days and nights. PhotoWings supported the video documentation and live-streaming of LOOK3 INsight Presentations, which you can view on our site now.
The Everyday Projects is a network of photographers and educators who have built social media narratives through stories of everyday life around the world that delight, surprise, and inform as they confront stubborn misconceptions.
Beginning with Everyday Africa in 2012, the concept quickly spread to all corners of the globe, with dozens of @everyday feeds on the continent, region, country, city, and even neighborhood level: from Latin America to Asia, Iran to the USA, Rio to the Bronx — all with the goal of promoting local norms and celebrating global commonalities.
The Everyday Projects use photography to challenge the stereotypes that distort our understanding of the world. They use classrooms to connect students to communities from disparate parts of the globe and foster mutual acceptance. In doing so, they are creating new generations of storytellers and audiences that recognize the need for multiple perspectives in portraying the cultures that define us.
PhotoWings has partnered with The Everyday Projects to develop visual literacy, empathy and communication skills through a variety of education initiatives and events, including the development of the organization’s website, a book and educational supplement, theatre projects, and a series of educational videos.
The International League of Conservation Photographers is a U.S. based non-profit organization whose mission is to further environmental and cultural conservation through ethical photography. PhotoWings supports and documents WiLDspeak, a symposium of presentations, discussions, learning, and inspiration from some of the world’s leading nature and wildlife photographers, scientists, and conservation program implementers. The event explores how visual media can best contribute to successful conservation communicators and outcomes around the globe. PhotoWings documents the program and conducts separate interviews with presenters.
Family.Life is a collaborative student project initiated by Syracuse University’s Newhouse School. The project, a graduate student thesis in honor of the groundbreaking Family of Man exhibition made in 1955, explores the feelings, relationships, obstacles and identities of families through visual stories produced by 32 photography schools around the world. PhotoWings funding will support the creation of a photography project management toolkit using Family.Life as a case study in building community, the publication of a book about the project to be distributed at no cost to participating educational institutions and the exploration of further photography-related projects with participating universities.
Appalshop uses place-based media, arts and education to document the life, celebrate the culture, and voice the concern of Appalachia and rural America. PhotoWings partnered with Appalshop to create a youth-based media curriculum/toolkit incorporating lessons on media responsibility and literacy, representation, cross-cultural collaboration and place-based media making.
Documenting DETROIT is a program of Facing Change: Documenting America (FCDA), a 501(c)3 non-profit organization created by photojournalists in 2009 to address our era of great challenges in the United States through photographs and narratives in collaboration with the Library of Congress.
PhotoWings partnered with Ashoka U to produce a free webinar, Self-Discovery Through Photography. With this webinar, participants gain valuable skills to use in work and in life, including: communication skills, gaining trust and access, visual literacy, critical thinking, applied empathy, resilience, ethical considerations, preservation, and other critical changemaker aptitudes.