|
Photovoice Goals, Process, & Training
Goals
The Wyoming SAGE Photovoice Project has the following goals:
- To provide a platform for children, youth, and families to record and reflect their personal and community strengths and concerns through the use of photographs and narratives
- To promote critical dialogue and knowledge about personal and community mental health issues
- To inform policy makers and broader society through public exhibitions and other venues about those personal and community issues of greatest concern and pride
- To obtain new forms of data with which to inform our theories (and programs) that relate to mental health needs in Wyoming
Process
Typically, the process of a Photovoice project includes:
- Identifying and conceptualizing the problem/issue/idea
- Defining broader goals and objectives
- Recruiting an audience (community leaders, policy makers, stakeholders…) for Photovoice findings
- Training facilitators, staff, and community volunteers
- Conducting participant training sessions in the Photovoice technique/ethics
- Developing initial structure/themes for taking pictures (e.g., strengths, concerns, challenges and under-represented aspects)
- Picture taking – the Photo Expeditions
- Critical reflection and dialogue
- Documenting stories/writing narratives
- Formative evaluation
- Reaching policy makers, donors, media, researchers, and others who may be mobilized to create change
- Conducting a participatory evaluation of policy and program implementation
Training
Staff and participants will attend Photovoice trainings. The first Photovoice training at each site begins with a discussion of cameras, ethics, and power; ways of seeing photographs; and a philosophy of giving photographs back to community members as a way of expressing appreciation, respect, or camaraderie. The curriculum may then move to address mechanical aspects of camera use and techniques. Ethical issues related to taking photographs will be covered in detail including obtaining informed consent from people included in images.
|
