Letters Home: Through the Lens of Empowerment (video) | The Outsider News What started out as a seed project, "Empowering Kenyan Girls Through the Art of Photography," turned out to be an inspirational journey of uplifting encounters, all recorded on the photo-sensitive diodes of our digital media cards. Lions and change agents and warriors, oh my! The following images and living photos are dedicated to reliving the dream and "meeting" the people & wildlife that won our hearts and changed our minds. The first 10 days of our stay at Daraja were eye opening to say the least! The tribes they came from often had a history of conflict and war, so they were also taught the values of conflict resolution, tolerance for differences and team-work as part of their studies. The program was comprised of a series of classes that covered the nuts and bolts of camera use and each lesson had an empowerment component to it. “For the first class, the focus was to use the camera to empower both the model and the photographer. “Today I taught the girls the art of living photos!
Letters Home: Through the Lens of Empowerment - PART II (video) | The Outsider News Before embarking on this trip to Kenya, Julian wrote a report on poaching. This gave him a solid understanding of the complexities of killing animals for fun and black market body parts. “Hundreds of thousands of animals die from poaching every year,” Julian wrote, “Poaching has been illegal since the 20th century. One reason poaching is pitiless is that they sell animal body parts from animals -- specifically raccoons, bears, big cats, rhinos, elephants and alligators. Our first stop on our ecotourism journey was Treetops Hotel, a game-viewing lodge on stilts located in the Aberdare National Park. It is mind-boggling that still today, over 33,000 elephants are killed every year for ivory, according to Save The Elephants. Ecotourism bonus point: The lodge through its “Return The Bush” Initiative started in 2007, has rehabilitated 16.5Ha around Treetops and has planted over 37,000 indigenous Trees by 2011. That night, we stayed at Pundas Milias in a Luxury tent.