State CYFAR Program Spotlight

Partnerships for Activism and Social Justice, Michigan

Some of the Photovoice images were happy ones, of
friends and family. Others depicted neighborhood
problems.

PASJ, pronounced “passage”, is a program that tries to put youth members on a journey of discovering social justice for themselves and their communities.

Drawing upon the principles of community youth development, PASJ capitalizes on the youths’ energy and fresh perspective to get them to look closely at their own communities and effect change. Through this effort, both youth and community can benefit, says State Project Director Karen Pace of Michigan State University Extension.

PASJ has sites in Ypsilanti in southeast Michigan, and in the Lake Michigan town of Muskegon. At both sites, PASJ attempts to engage youth in seeing social justice issues in their communities and then addressing them. Among the tools used in this effort is a social justice technique called Photovoice. Photovoice is not a software program or a type of camera, but a process that encourages youth to examine the meaning of the things they see every day.

Photovoice puts cameras in the hands of struggling people around the world – rural women in China, people in Boston with mental illness or teachers in South Africa. It was developed by Caroline Wang of University of Michigan and Mary Ann Burris of the University of London as a form of community consultation. Michigan has many communities that have seen their populations and standards of living change for the worse along with the fortunes of the auto industry, one of its biggest employers, and it has adversely affected many urban youth.

Washtenaw County Community Project Director Chana Hawkins says PASJ’s target audience in Ypsilanti is youth affected by poverty and a high high school drop-out rate. “I see a lot of children wandering,” Hawkins said. “When you ask them what are they doing this weekend, this term in school, or next summer, they have no real plans.” Parents of these youth are very often preoccupied with their own troubles, and there are few structured out-of-school-time activities. In 2003, facing budget concerns, the Ypsilanti City Council closed the city’s recreation department, including its senior center, community pool and the Parkridge Community Center, which served mainly youth age 7-17. That community center is now in the hands of a few local individuals who do their best to keep it up. Although the building is understaffed and in severe disrepair, it is the PASJ program site. Parkridge Community Center and the surrounding green space is a second home to area teens, but good attendance at PASJ activities is not guaranteed, since these teens’ lives are often unstable.

Nevertheless, Hawkins sees opportunities and community assets in Ypsilanti. Eastern Michigan University and its student body of 20,000 occupies one-third of city’s four square miles and there are 20 churches within walking distance of the center. She optimistically calls these churches “twenty sources of adults,” potential volunteers or allies for community improvement. “We are seeking to engage youth with adults that are assets in our community,” Hawkins said. The crumbling Parkridge Community Center represents another opportunity, she said, for PASJ to have a role in shaping the center’s future. A relatively stable population means that there is a sense of history and community that some cities and towns lack. “There’s a lot of untapped potential," Hawkins said.

In the Photovoice process, participants train to use photojournalism techniques to see their surroundings more objectively. Then these non-traditional photographers write captions for the photos that have the most meaning for them. The photos can be sold or displayed in a number of ways. Through this process, the points of view of these photographers can be seen by others, and possibly by those who may have more power than they do to effect change in their communities. PASJ capitalized on the availiability of a grad student trained in this technique, but Hawkins believes the process can be self-learned by qualified staff who study the materials available. The cost of equipment is flexible, depending on the type of camera chosen. Photovoice was a natural fit for PASJ, with its the community youth development approach, Pace said, and blended well with other PASJ efforts, such as poetry jams and learning how to work on boards.

In April 2007, 20 PASJ youth from Ypsilanti and Muskegon attended a Photovoice training retreat in Kalamazoo. They learned to use digital cameras and docking stations, as well an older medium – film. Simple Holga cameras allow the photographer to layer images on the same frame without learning complicated software programs, a technique that can produce impactful images similar to a collage. Volunteers taught youth to use a darkroom to print these images. All of this was coordinated by a grad student staff member who had been trained in the Photovoice technique.

Ypsilanti youth shared their personal statements of learning and reflection at
a Photovoice presentation to family, friends, and neighbors.

The following month, when the youth had returned home, they spent time walking through their own neighborhoods merely observing the things they had seen every day, then photographing those things with newly opened eyes. The images were compelling, and included things like children playing on playgrounds encircled in caution tape, boarded up houses and piles of trash. They also included hopeful and positive images from their lives, such as a mother holding her college diploma, and a self portrait with friends. One 12-year-old girl took only photos of churches, which to her represented a part of society that pretended to care, but offered no comfort.

After an interruption in the program last autumn when the Parkridge Community Center closed temporarily, PASJ and its Photovoice program resumed. The broken momentum was hard to overcome, Hawkins said, and not all of the same youth returned. But with the assistance of PASJ staff and volunteers, the images they compiled and presented at a banquet in February this year were impactful. They attracted the attention of the Ann Arbor News newspaper, which featured them in its Ypsilanti edition.

Seeing their images in the newspaper was an important moment for the youth and the program and an indication that their projects were well done. It was a major milestone for the youth involved, and one that Hawkins hopes the program can build upon. The publicity was not universally well received – at least one town elder complained to the newspaper that the images made Ypsilanti look bad. But perhaps that complaint was an indication that the images the youth presented were compelling, and proof that their lives are in need of change.

Pace says the program’s goals for the next couple of years are to continue building and strengthening youth-adult partnerships. The Muskegon site is focusing on health issues and the impact of health inequities between races, classes and sexes and on healthy development and well being of youth and adults in the communities PASJ serves.

You may wish to consult:

The Community Youth Development Journal

Hawkins, Chana, (2008) Youth Find Voice Through Photos and Essays. Michigan 4-H Today, 19-1. Retrieved 23 October 2008.

Photovoice

See previous Program Spotlight articles