Sunday, September 23, 2012

Photos from the field

After a month in the South Asia office, I have visited three projects. I came here for a starting period of three months to build the website and create content for the website. I have been working on my photography. Hopefully I can spend a weekend taking a course because I have a ton of questions about improving.

Anyway, I don't know how I feel posting photos from my project visits on Facebook, since it makes me feel like tourist or something. So I'll post my favorite work photos here and link to my stories as they come out.


Our JRS tailoring teacher (in orange) teaches 25 women from the Burmese Chin community on the outskirts of Dehli how to make clothes. The funny part, they don't speak the same language! It's interesting to watch her explain how to sew in Hindi, only to watch her have to go around one by one to show them again. But it works! They are all wearing clothes they made and can make whatever you want.


The women in the class are moms first, tailors second. So in between the sewing machines are sleeping babies.


Getting ready to run her new pattern through the machine.


In Tamil Nadu, India's most southern state, Tamil refugees from Sri Lanka live in 114 camps. It is incredibly difficult for young women to grow up and succeed in this atmosphere and some drop out of school. JRS meets with these young women and teaches them empowerment, leadership, public speaking and a host of skills from tailoring to cooking to typing to gardening. In this photo, all of the girls and parents watch from "backstage" as they give their closing performance.


Mothers of the girls laugh at their performances at their graduation ceremony. Read the story I wrote about it here.


In Nepal, JRS, along with Caritas, provides education in all Bhutanese refugee camps. It was heralded as the best refugee education a few years ago by the UN. Now, most are being resettled, 60,000 in the US alone.


High schools students learn trigonometry (and all other subjects) in English to prepare them for resettlement, but also learn Bhutanese and Nepalese.

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