As The Gleaner reported yesterday, after being introduced to photography at the St Andrew Parish Church Care Centre on July 22, eight children and young adults were handed cameras and given free rein to capture images from their day-to-day lives. They then presented their photographs and shared the experiences behind them on the closing day, again at the centre.

Even at this nascent stage (the main phase is slated to begin next January), a comprehensive analysis of the photographs would probably have provided fascinating insight into the lives and concerns of this group of young people. And we can only hope that when the project gets going fully in five months, there is an intention to not only equip the participants with a financially viable skill, but also extract information from them in a systematic way.

Not that we are charging the Miami, United States-based Kia Cares charity organisation, which organised the Big Joe-sponsored project, with that responsibility. By providing the training with Martei Korley and the equipment, they have (perhaps unwittingly) sown fertile ground for invaluable data generation. Handled properly and combined with other sources, in the long run this information can be used to inform policy.

To expand on the cliché, the youngsters' photographs can tell graphically (in more ways than one) their millions of words which often go unheard or unheeded.

Groundbreaking

We must note, though, that while 'Through The Eyes of a Child' is laudable and exciting, it is not groundbreaking. Through the Super Plus supermarket chain, businessman Wayne Chen has previously sponsored the 'Click' programme in which children from inner-city communities were involved in much the same process, but were given cameras for a month.

There is another more obvious function for the images children record through these programmes, that of straightforward documentation. We continue to be fascinated how, in more technologically advanced societies, there seems to be a wealth of images, still and video, available for any subject (human or otherwise) which is eventually deemed newsworthy on a national level. Often these do not come from a professional source, such as a local media house, but have been captured by rank amateurs for personal reasons.

National identity

If we are to gather the immense storehouse of memories necessary to cement a sense of belonging and national identity, as well as provide primary data for documentation and future historical research, clearly national media cannot cover all the bases. It will have to come from the community level and we believe that 'Through The Eyes of a Child' and 'Click' are excellent steps in that direction.

And appropriate, as well, because in the final analysis it is these children and the generations after them which will have to shape the society they live in and, hopefully, create the circumstances for better pictures to be taken by those who follow.

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