Approximately one billion people in the world live in slums, the highest concentration of them are in Asia. In the Philippines alone 20 million people live in slums and in India approx.64 million people. A slum, as defined by United Nations Habitat, is a dwelling that suffers one or more of the following conditions: lack of access to water that is safe from outside contamination, lack of access to sanitation facilities that separate human waste from human contact and lack of adequate living area.
Having photographs of our family is something the western world possibly takes for granted. We have hundreds or thousands of photos of our children, friends and families, either digitally or physically printed. However, a photograph is considered a luxury item to many any one which they cannot facilitate themselves. I have been working as a freelance photographer for several years, and I have always loved capturing portraits of people. So, I thought of this photo gifting project as a way to share my passion for photography and make thousands of people smile at the same time.
I have already started photo gifting in the slums of India and on the 18th of March 2019 I will be heading to one of the world's largest slums in Mumbai, Dharavi. This is sadly the last time that I can afford to self-fund this project, but I would love to continue creating and sharing these family portraits for these families. You can see some of the images I took and follow my story on Instagram or Facebook -
https://www.instagram.com/makingmemoriesproject/
https://www.facebook.com/Making-Memories-Project-2...
The last Making Memories project I did, I went into a slum in Rishikesh (northern India), along with a translator and a community officer. The story was documented on the video (shown here). Together, we coordinated family portrait photographs for everyone. We received an overwhelmingly warm response and I was able to shoot over 50 families in this one area. We returned on Christmas day to hand out the printed photographs and wish everyone a Merry Christmas. Through my translator I was told that they were very grateful and there were several mentions of putting the photo on the wall in their hut.
Currently, I am funding the project by myself, but I am not able to facilitate the costs anymore. So, I thought to reach out to the compassionate online community and see if we can Make Memories together. I would like to visit as many of these slums in Asia as I can. Not just to give them photos, but also to make a positive impact on the community and create something memorable together. My goal is to provide 5,000 memories (printed photos) in 1 year to families in slums across Asia who have never had excess income to spend on the luxury of printing photos. If this fund-raising goal is not reached, then I will aim to provide 2,400 photos in six months. Fulfilling my duties as some sort of nomadic, photographic Santa Claus, if you like.
I want to provide these photographs to these families to make a memory for them, of those they cherish most. I hope you can help me spread the love and the memories across the globe.
