Our Story
My name is Julayne Farmer. I am a graduate of the San Francisco Art Institute in California and I am initiating a program called Follow Your Art. This is a participatory photographic program which provides visual literacy instruction to under-served children around the world. It is my belief that teaching photographic technique and creative writing to these children will help them identify, represent, and enhance their health, communities, and lives. This program will provide the tools that foster self-awareness, conscience, independent thinking, and creative imagination. By encouraging the children to be surveyors of their communities and world, I am also encouraging them to take a journey inward, toward self-discovery as authors and artists of their own life stories. The articulate voices produced from this work will give these individuals new vision, new possibilities, a wider range of life choices, ways to respond to life and to change the world. Please see more about Follow Your Art's previous initiatives at our website: http://www.photo-literacy.com. In addition to raising funding for the project on Indiegogo, I am also selling prints of both my own work and the children's work at http://www.bluemelon.com/julayne81. 88% of the money raised from the selling of these prints will go to benefit the Follow Your Art initiative in Nepal and Northern India (as "bluemelon.com" procures 12% for hosting the images on their website).
The Impact
With Follow Your Art, I hope to set into affect positive social change through providing photographic tools and training to the children in these communities. The program will provide a stage for these participating groups to both exhibit and market their work and to motivate change in their communities and around the world. Through my past personal experiences in working with these children across the globe, the real consequence of not having a program like this one is that many of the children in these under-served countries are never shown a way to give voice to their concerns, dreams and hopes for the future. This program gives the youth - especially those who feel silenced by their elders, their religion, their culture, etc. - a unique voice through which to initiate and activate change.
What We Need & What You Get
I have raised money, in the past, for two Follow Your Art program initiatives: The first one was at a not for profit children's hospital in Siem Reap, Cambodia in 2006. The second initiative was in a remote primary/secondary school in Shey village, Ladakh, India in 2009. I needed money to implement this program into these facilities and I am again in need of money to fund this next venture into both a school in northern India and in a children's orphanage in Nepal by October 2012. By donating to this cause, you will be helping to offset the costs of travel expenses and creative materials. I am trying to raise $4,000 to help lay the foundation for this particular project.
Other Ways You Can Help
Please pass this on to anyone who might have even the slightest interest in youth empowerment, international cultures, childhood education, Nepal, India, art, photography, or even me, Julayne Farmer. "Like" the project on Facebook and share with as many people as possible. It's important that we get this done and I can't do it without you!