Foto’s Blog: “Not enough money for photographs”
Phodographer Maia Pelleg in Ghana April 2010
Maia Pelleg enthusiastically embraced Dog Meets World while volunteering as a Kiva Fellow before starting law school. Maia expressed reverence and respect for all the women she worked with. She wrote about Vela (above) who does not own a photograph of her children. Through Dog Meets World, Maia provided her first photos. Vela says,
I am a business lady,” and is proud that she has been accessing micro-loans to improve her revenue. Vela told Maia that half of her profits are reinvested in her business and the other half go to pay for food and school fees for her children. There is not enough money to pay for photographers.
Meet Rukyiah, she runs a general provisions shop two-hours from Tarkwa, Ghana. She sells items such as minerals, grains and flour to members of her community. Rukyiah credits a series of micro-loans with enabling her to truly provide for her four children.
“I’m good at business and I’m very hard-working,” she says, “Thank you for this photo. My children will be proud.”
Foto’s Blog: An Excellent Form of Diplomacy in Vietnam
NEW Phodographer Connie Kantar in Hanoi, Vietnam March 2011
Connie and her husband just returned from a vacation to Vietnam and Cambodia. Connie wrote that “All recipients of a Dog Meets World photo were extremely excited and appreciative. Thank you very much for introducing me to this outstanding idea. From my experience, it was an excellent form of diplomacy.”
They also encountered a street musician in Hanoi seen above in the photo and she tells this story:
His name is Mr. Hai Tatri, a retired engineer and he plays the violin and the guitar. We had stopped to ask his friend, a calligrapher, if he would create a calligraphy for us. As we waited, Mr. Tatri struck up a tune, The Star Spangled Banner! Before we knew it, we were all singing along with him, he had a very good voice! as we belted out our national anthem in the capitol city of what was North Vietnam, a country with which we were at war so many years ago. He knew all the words (better than we did!)! It was quite a scene and event and he loved getting his photo on the spot with Foto!
Foto’s Blog: It’s so much more than a photo in South Africa
Phodographer Samantha Coffin in Kayamandi, South Africa, March 2010
Samantha visited DMW offices in Washington DC yesterday. She told us she still communicates with the students in the township where she volunteered while studying abroad last year. She sends them packages and thinks about them everyday! They tell her how they are going to attend University and someday come visit her in the United States. She loves them. Samantha says:
The children I worked with meant the world to me, however doing Dog Meets World and giving them a photograph of just themselves meant more than the world to them. These photographs started a photo family, a bond so unique and everlasting. Thank you for helping me to make my own Dog Meets World family in South Africa and Zambia too!
Here’s Samantha having fun with Foto and her afterschool students!
Foto’s Blog: Military introduces DMW in Afghanistan
Phodographer Major Timothy Reed in Bagram, Afghanistan 2010
Major Reed is the C/91st Civil Affairs Commander. He has taken on the Dog Meets World project. He said:
The kids are wonderful yet still apprehensive… they do not get a lot of people out to their site even though it is just outside our gate. This first set of pictures was a very non intrusive operation where we just got the kids introduced to our force protection level.. vest, helmets, and weapons. All children in the photo holding the puppy got a photo and there is a photo that will go in the school of all the kids in that class. The school is the Jom Khadam Middle School in Bagram Afghanistan.
Thank you Major Reed for introducing the toy Foto dog and using the power of photography to connect with these children.
Foto’s Blog: DMW is “The Face of Philanthropy” in the Chronicle of Philanthropy
The current issue of the Chronicle of Philanthropy highlights Dog Meets World’s mission of reaching out and connecting cultures through the simple and fun act of sharing photographs with those in need in the world. Picture by phoDOGrapher Xander Meise Bay of schoolchildren in Bago, Myanmar. Here is the text of the article by Michelle Gienow:
Carolyn Lane loves to travel, a passion that combines naturally with her talent for taking photographs. During a trip to Haiti in 2007 to volunteer for Habitat for Humanity, the Washington resident spent time with a group of little girls, interacting and taking group pictures. Looking at the images later, she realized that she was smiling but the children were not.
“A Haitian friend told me, ‘Most of these girls have never had their picture taken. This was an important event for them, and they wanted to look dignified,’” says Ms. Lane. She thought of how she and other Americans take and share photos routinely amongst themselves, “but then we go on these trips and we don’t even think of sharing or exchanging the pictures we take with the subjects.”
“I resolved then that I would never again presume to take somebody’s picture and then walk away without sharing it with them,” she says.
That resolution led to the founding, in 2008, of Dog Meets World, a nonprofit group that sends its signature small, stuffed canine—named Foto—out into the world along with volunteers armed with digital cameras and portable, battery-powered printers.
Ms. Lane calls Dog Meets World “an add-on project. People already heading to the developing world for a host of reasons, vacation or business travel, or whatever, can use this as a way to interact and connect with the community.”
Xander Meise Bay, a lawyer who lives in New Hampshire, volunteered as a “phodographer” (as the charity calls its helpers who fetch pictures) last August while working on a war-crimes tribunal in Cambodia. She also made a side trip to Myanmar, where she photographed young children she met outside a monastery school in Bago.
“Working in the developing world, you’re often addressing some pretty intractable and distressing problems,” she says. “Dog Meets World is a fun, hopeful thing with some immediate satisfaction for everyone involved. You can’t help but smile.”
Currently, Dog Meets World has a staff of one—Ms. Lane, who draws no salary. She is helped by her 25-year-old son, Austin, who co-founded the charity and handles its Web site and marketing.
The annual $15,000 budget comes from private donations. Volunteers use their own equipment and donate to the charity to receive a Foto dog.
Why the dog? In a word, Ms. Lane says, “branding”: “We’ve had 200 volunteers in 38 countries take and give over 6,000 pictures, and visually Foto ties all these wide-flung places and people together.”
Foto was designed by Ms. Lane to resemble her real-life dog, Jazz. The toy functions as an icebreaker: “This gives the kids something to hold and also helps cross any language barrier.”
Foto’s front paws are embroidered with a heart and a peace sign, emblematic of Dog Meets World’s mission.
“If you had very few photos, how long do you think you’d hang on to this one? A lifetime,” says Ms. Lane.