Pete's Project Updates

Hello Everyone....sorry I have kind of dropped off the planet. I am in Cambodia now with the Jolie-Pitt Foundation collecting data for my project. It has been a really neat experience so far to work with this organization and to see all that they have been doing. I am not actually staying in Angelina's house, but I am on her property. She own a big piece of property up in the mountains that has no electricity, except for through a generator from 6pm to 10pm at night...this makes for very hot sleeping. Her property consists of about 4 or 5 houses that are used for employee and volunteer housing, headquarters, field kitchen etc...then down a little dirt road is where her house is. There are pictures of her, brad, and their kids flying in on helicopters all over the houses. I guess they stop by about twice a year.

So my project is a photovoice project with the kids. I brought over 200 disposable cameras and distributed them to school children in grades 4-9. After teaching them how to use them, almost all of them had never seen one before, they were asked to go around their community and take pictures of things that make it difficult for them to have good hygiene and good sanitation. I am then going to develop the pictures and have the kids pick 3 of their favorites that depict most accurately what life is like in their community regarding hygiene and sanitation. They are then going to write a paragraph about each of these pictures that explains: 1. why they took the picture. 2. why is what the picture shows a problem. 3. how they feel when they look at it. 4. if they were a decision maker, what would they do to solve the problem. We are then going to take these results to the decision makers and have a focus group with them to see if the children's input will change their future actions in anyway at all? Jolie-Pitt is also going to make posters of some of the pictures, along with the caption of from the children, and place them in places throughout the communities to help bring awareness to all community members. All in all, it should be pretty fun.

Here are a few pictures of what is has been like.

a few of the buddhist monks wandering around the temple

one of the old buddhist temples in town

kids examining the cameras

me and my translator teaching the kids how to use the cameras

my bed at the jolie-pitt headquarters