Dakar Senegal Photo Gallery...

So I am using Picasa to house around 160 images from Dakar. Please click this link to view them. A  month out but it feels immediate still as I am daily going through photos, having great interactions with many of the youth and adults back in Dakar via Facebook. I look forward to a day when I will be able to return.

Amazed and thrilled that this project was funded through Kickstarter through old friends, family and people I have never met. Thank you.

Post Senegal - The journey continues...

Amazed, humbled, thrilled... My first Kickstarter campaign is 105% funded. I have returned from Dakar with thousands of images, video clips and audio and met incredible and inspiring people along the journey...

And the journey continues! I have produced my first piece of media, other than my blog, and it is live on the Play For Peace website - a scrolling slideshow and text describing my personal experience while in Dakar, witnessing the training and my perceptions whilst in the larger community of Thiaroye and Senegal.

A huge thanks to all the Kickstarter donors and to everyone involved. It has been awesome!

Dakar Youth... Sharing...

This photo I took last week of homeless children in Dakar. There were to be 34 of them sleeping in that tiny space that night. It was late evening and we only stayed a few minutes but what I understood was that this tiny non profit in Thairoye Dakar is a partner non-profit for Citizens of the Streets - Citoyen Des Rues - Senegal. A Paris based NGO that seeks to provide assistance to street youth around the world.

This is El Hadj Beye and he is the president of the Senegal chapter and gave us a tour of Thairoye and the work they are engaged in. I also went to a meeting at city hall where El Hadj was awarded $500 by the Ministry of education and youth for his his NGO. Conducted in Wolof and French, with prayers by the tribal village headman it was quite an experience. The average wage in this economically challenged area I was told was $1 a day - below poverty line. I also accompanied El Hadj and the director of CAFT (below) for a meeting with the USAID education director for West Africa to talk about project funding.
 

I took this photo two days ago of Mamadou Diallo, the director and founder of CAFT - a school for children in Thairoye Senegal. It has been active since 1992 and is considered a community school which is certified by the Ministry of Education yet set up like a private school where each parent pays according to their means. Many are on scholarship, some pay nothing.

Since its founding Mamadou says he has personally gone to homes and knocked on doors to ask parents why there children were not in school and brought some 500 new students to CAFT this way. El Hadj Beye was one of his former students. Here is the CAFT website in French.

I was there to experience firsthand a training by an international non profit Play For Peace. The goal was to help create mentors and facilitators with CAFT teachers and older youth in the school. Mamadou had invited several other NGOs in Dakar to be part of this training as well so that it would have a much more far reaching effect in Senegal.

Elisabeth from Quebec Canada (she speaks French), and Agyat from India were trainers. Play For Peace is not a funding organization and was in Dakar to share their methodology that is now active in some 20 countries in communities of conflict. A skype session to Guatemala with an active Play For Peace center there, and knowledge exchange with Agyat and Elisabeth were part of the curriculum as was a heavy amount of game playing.

Together the two trainers have nearly two decades of training experience working with communities in the slums of India to the gang-slammed streets of Guatemala.

Every minute there was filled. Amazing for both the cultural experience and the warmth of the people as it was for the crash course in international aid work, local politics and being at ground zero where it all comes together.

My life in 10 days has been forever changed. I look forward to sharing these stories. My Kickstarter I am using to cover costs for this project is 89% funded. Thank you to everyone.

Breaking Barriers in Dakar...

We pushed through the darkness under an illuminating moon and light turbulence. Clouds were lit up, white over the vast expanse of the Atlantic that I could never see. The purser announced our landing in a thick Afrikaans accent and that the plane would be heading on to Johannesburg only departing Dakar passengers would be allowed off. We dropped toward a great arm of glistening lights, a constellation of stars in a space of sea. The new Old World for me. The furthest western point of Africa and Senegal...

The days have rolled quickly, one into another. Time is flying by. Every hour is filled with a new surprise. More smiles, more laughter and more ways I could not have imagined to break through the language and cultural barriers. Barriers that seemed to evaporate upon arrival. I did not feel acutely the “stranger in a strange land” syndrome I have traveling in the past.

On the roof, five stories up on top of the community school run by my host Mamadu and his organization C-A-F-T, primary school kids were laughing, clapping, singing, smiling... Engaged in play with their teachers who were being trained by Elisabeth who speaks French coming from Quebec Canada, and Agyat who comes from India – and like myself does not speak the local language of French and certainly not Wolof. There were also several other adults belonging to several other NGOs and even anartist and poet among those that Elisabeth and Agyat were training to bring Play For Peace into their communities in the greater Dakar region...

Elisabeth brings with her over 6 years of experience with Play for Peace - mostly in Guatemala and Agyat for 13 years with Play For Peace in India. To see them work is a powerful experience. They are relaxed and continually engaged and attuned to not only the moment but the outcomes and how they are heading there. To see their process unfold is illuminating - the evening before as they loosely plan the day together, checking in throughout the day, tweaking, removing barriers by working to engage all the participants and help them feel comfortable and focused – working through the Play For Peace methodology that Everybody is invited and everybody wins. Mamadu, the host here in Senegal was very forward thinking and non-competitive by inviting a number of different NGOs here to participate, not just his teachers...

My self imposed barrier, my talisman of protection, I assumed would be my camera. A way to be involved but safely on the outside looking in, the observer and future sharer but thankfully that was not to be. In a skype interview to the Executive Director, Agyat mentioned that, “Bennett is connecting and communicating with his camera with the children. All he has to do is have it out and they are all around him.” It was true, there were some that would run away if it was brought to eye level but it was always with laughter and a kind of game of tag... Waving at me to take the picture of them and then running away weaving deftly through a laughing knot of other children. Some were brave and asked to see the image on the screen and they would laugh at themselves and their friends.

The training and the play sessions are mostly one and the same. Reinforcing the games by playing them again - the working theory that through repetition and through inclusion, non-competitiveness and caring the games bring everyone together in a very positive and joyful way. There is magic that happens when a large group of children are smiling, laughing, playing...

The French teacher, an older man in traditional robes of the Muslim faith, came up to the roof and was all smiles when he saw the kids in two groups, circled up and actively playing a game. He spoke very few words in English but needed no words to express how happy he was. He put his arm around me. “I am French teacher. No understand English.” He pointed to the children and proceeded to search through his limited English vocabulary to express himself. “This is wonderful. I very happy you are here. Peace very good, very important. Thank you.”

Yesterday beneath drizzly skies, as the call to prayer rang out across Thiaroye and Dakar, the trainers Agyat and Elisabeth shared some of the philosophy of experiential education and how to effectively run play sessions with the 17 Senegalize. When Agyat would speak and Elisabeth would translate and add to the conversation. They seemed to seamlessly communicated. Sometimes Wolof was spoken by the trainees as they shared questions or observations amongst themselfs, occasionally a few words English idioms that they knew would be shouted in affirmation. At one point Agyat made a point that, “If you go and play in many different areas with children this is not Play For Peace – that is just play. The model is based on consistent continual contact. For any experience to become a complete learning it has to have frequency.”

The whole idea Agyat later told me is to empower. “But we keep the power with us if we make all the decisions. Through experiential education the participants take responsibility for their actions and the consequences of what happens. Normally in the classroom this never happens and as a child you don't have any power in this environment.”

PIctures from Dakar...

Agyat from Play for Peace has posted these photos he has taken so far in Senegal... I am in a few of them. He has done a great job documenting his process of bringing Play for Peace here with Elisabeth... here is the link to the link to his album.

Me in Senegal...

Kickstarter Has Launched!!!

Wow! Within just a few hours of going live I already already have backers for my Kickstarter campaign... I am honored.

I am leaving Friday morning for Dakar, Senegal. I have never been to Africa. I am both excited and nervous.

My goal: Shoot thousands of images - candid and portraits. Get lots of audio interviews, write feverishly and document the process of trying to create a better life for youths that face intense adversity in Dakar.

I need all the support I can get! You can help back my project by going here to Kickstarter.

Below is from the campaign...

Documenting the struggle and resilience of Dakar youth

Describe what happens when two NGOs and youth of Dakar come together and through play try to create a better life from great adversity.

This November I am traveling to Dakar, Senegal to document youth in and around this city of two million as they participate in a program designed to quickly improve their lives. Statistics from The World Bank and UNICEF show that only about half of Senegal's 12 million citizens are literate. Over half live in poverty. I will be working with two NGOs (non-governmental organizations), whose mission is to help empower youth.
Why Now?
Dakar is offering an ideal platform to visually and verbally describe a combined effort between an international and local NGO - They believe that the program they seek to create will have great potential to positively effect the lives of children in Dakar.
A center will be established for youth and the goal is to co-create a program designed to serve and empower under-served youth of Dakar by playing cooperative games and by training locals to be mentors and instructors of these games.
How will I share this?
My involvement will be to document and create a visual and written portfolio. Through photos and recorded interviews I plan to share the stories of the local children. I will also document the unfolding of the process of creating this center aimed at empowering youth.
To do this I will need your support. I have to cover travel and in country costs and then spend weeks assembling all of the material upon my return. Donors will be an essential part of the process and I will be sending updates while in Dakar - and while the process continues when I am back in Colorado. I will be providing photos and downloads of the series and process to those that help make this project a reality.
Why me?
For over a decade I worked as an outdoor educator, experiential educator and a guide and believe in the efficacy and necessity of the shared process and mentoring for building trust and confidence to better the lives of youth. My experience however, was largely with children from California, from private schools and privileged backgrounds. I am curious to see firsthand and to document how an international NGO can co-create with a local one to provide a platform for sustained positive change within a very challenged city in the developing world.
My big questions I hope to answer are: Can play be used a kind of international language and create a better life for these children? And if so, what exactly is this magic recipe for empowering under-served youth in challenged communities?
You can see more of my photography and published feature work at my website bennettbarthelemy.blogspot.com
Below (and the lead picture) are a series of images from Andes in South America that are part of an ongoing project describing the challenges indigenous cultures have to face while embracing tourism and climate change. The images are currently under curation at Tandem Stills and Motion.

Risks and challenges 

There will be language challenges (French, Wolof, Arabic and a number of tribal languages are spoken) and cultural differences - but spending time and building a rapport and trust of the community will help to overcome obstacles.

Documentary Work/Play

Is play actually work? Does it work to play and improve lives? Can play be international language for positive change?

Africa looms much closer on the horizon today.  I will likely be there much sooner than I realized... Like a few days?!

Documenting the struggle and resilience of Dakar youth

A tiny village without electricity high in the Cordillera Blanca of Peru's Andes ©Bennett Barthelemy/Tandem

My first foray in to the creative fundraising world... I am about to launch a Kickstarter program...

Perhaps my biggest challenge to date was sitting in front of the video camera yesterday. I realized I like to be holding the camera - not being the subject. I guess this was my crash course in empathic understanding for all the folks who have been patient models for me over the years was overdue.

This documentary project is powerful for me on many levels.

I worked with kids from third grade to high school for over a decade on and off. Doing both experiential and outdoor education. I saw incredibly positive results. Kids who were shy or nervous gaining confidence - normal school dynamics fall apart on a hiking trail, while climbing and doing team building activities. Kids gain agency and become active participants in their own lives and in forging the collective goodwill of the group. With a little mentoring and helping to empower kids to realize they have a voice, worthwhile questions and knowledge to share, and wonder is appreciated - creates a space fo certain positivity to blossom - and helps with a strong sense that our challenged world just might be OK.

I have missed that time in my life. There were daily rewards with smiles, wonder, inspiration, laughter. Playing a game to teach about the local geology, or each taking turns speaking our collective myth about a group of stars we were viewing under the night sky, walking with your blindfolded partner and being their eyes...

But this was in the deserts of the American Southwest and the mountains of California's Sierra Nevada. With large budgets for travel, props and shiny new protective gear, fancy vehicles to travel in and nice and safe national parks and state parks. The population was largely wealthy private school groups, upper middle class kids and from the first world... And with very little in the way of language and cultural differences. We never had to question if we would be eating the next day. We counted on the fact that we would be safe so we could better focus on having fun and learning through play.

Africa and the international non profit Play For Peace intrigue me. PFP is taking aspects of what I was doing with experiential education and will bring it Senegal in a few days. PFP has never been to Senegal before and it poses for them a largely unknown landscape of new cultures and languages. Granted, they are in 23 different countries and expanding - There programs and techniques are in communities of conflict around the globe so they have a leg up. They are following the model of cooperative play and using whatever is easily available in these communities for props and gear that have little or no budget for such things as play. The plan is to stay for two weeks- play, train, mentor and then leave...

Will I uncover more powerful play parallels in Senegal to my time in the US? What will the parallel be to kids having fun while holding a climbing rope and building trust while on $100,000 climbing wall and ropes course? The facilities will be vastly different in this city of two million and in a country where 50% live below poverty. Does play empower youth in the long term? Obviously PFP thinks so. They help build centers with local communities to effect this change on a sustainable level to help improve the lives of these youth that often live in intense poverty, surrounded by violence, vast unemployment, natural disaster and war-prone areas.

The languages spoken in Senegal are enough to exhaust the most dedicated polyglot. French, Wolof, Arabic, English and many other tribal languages... Religious and cultural diffrences, infrastructure, poverty, literacy.... And then simple play - empowering youth through coopertaive play and mentoring... Can this make the world a better place? Sounds great. I plan to find out...