Welcome to the Focus on Youth web site.
I love taking pictures because you can catch the feeling and the moment of the person, places or things. Taking pictures makes me feel good about myself. I’m trying to get good, I want to work for a professional photographer so I can learn the craft.”
~ Walter, youth photographer
At-risk kids take photos, learn their inner worth
An article from the Oregonian written by Margie Boule
Visualize an at-risk kid in Portland. He may live on the streets or in transitional housing. He’s made poor choices. He may have been in a gang. He may have used drugs.
Can you picture him? OK . . . what’s in his hand? A needle? A gun?
Try a camera.
For the past five years, Donna Lee Holmes has been putting cameras in the hands of at-risk Portland youths between 15 and 20 years old. Those cameras have changed the young people. Well, the cameras and the photographers who mentored the kids. And the public exhibitions where strangers were amazed by the kids’ photos.
Three times a year, for up to 10 weeks each session, Donna Lee has offered free photography classes, photographic equipment and darkroom training to young people who need help.
In five years, she says, every piece of equipment she has ever loaned has come back in perfect condition. There have been no fights. There’s been no graffiti on the walls of the Focus on Youth offices, the nonprofit Donna Lee founded in 2003.
“They have been totally respectful and appreciative,” Donna Lee says. The classes, the mentoring by adult photographers, the shooting trips around the city have been “invaluable” to the young people.
Their schoolwork improves. They make different choices in other parts of their lives, she says. The experience of learning to take photographs “has a transforming quality, I think,” Donna Lee says. “I know the expression ‘making a difference’ is used a lot, but photography really can make a difference.”
The program isn’t just teaching a hobby, she says. It’s educational. “Because we do the photography the old-fashioned way, they learn chemistry, they learn math. The chemicals have to be mixed precisely; it takes patience and persistence. And these kids succeed.”
The kids do so well, in fact, that sometimes their teachers come to the Focus on Youth offices to investigate what has created such great change.
“The difference in kids is phenomenal,” Donna Lee says. “They’re excited about going to school. They can’t wait to get over here and work in the darkroom” after school. “It’s because they are creating something tangible. High-risk kids haven’t had many successes. Many have low self-esteem.” They don’t see themselves as smart, or creative or talented.
“But when you give them a camera, they start seeing beauty they never saw before.”
Donna Lee and volunteer photographers mentor the students one on one, teach how to use 35 mm cameras, how to choose subjects, how to use a darkroom.
At the end of the session each student selects his or her best work and places it in a public exhibition. “They blossom,” Donna Lee says. “Their self-esteem skyrockets.”
She says she loves all her students. But she remembers especially well a girl who’d quit high school after having a baby. “She had not made good choices,” Donna Lee says. The girl returned to school and signed up for the Focus on Youth classes. “And she wrote this incredible letter, about how she’d never thought she was beautiful . . . but learning to take photographs had taught her she really was beautiful, and there was beauty everywhere.”
She remembers another student, a boy who barely spoke English. “He’d also dropped out of school, been involved with drugs and gangs. But his work was so beautiful.” The boy worked “very, very hard” at Focus on Youth. His English also improved because he wanted to explain how he’d created his photographs.
A year later he had earned his GED, was still clean and sober and was still making photographs.
Not only do the students learn a skill and gain a mentor, but they also learn “a way to express emotions in a way that’s safe,” Donna Lee says. “They’re going through difficult times. I see photographs that are truly sad.”
Focus on Youth took a hiatus to move to a new location, on Southeast Water Avenue, near OMSI. Developer Brad Melsin of Beam Development offered Focus on Youth a permanent, free space –and built a dream studio, classroom and darkroom for the charity.
“And every time I thank him, he turns it around and says, ‘Oh, I want to thank you. You’re the one working with the kids.’ “
Donna Lee has given her time, her love and a lot of her own money to create Focus on Youth. She even refinanced her home to keep it going. “We’re at a point now where we’ll have to do fundraising,” she says. “I’ve started writing grants.”
Somehow, she’ll make it happen. “I know we’re making a difference,” she says. “They come to us and love what we offer, and they produce beautiful work. They are transformed. It’s a very, very positive thing.”
Portland’s Hidden Gem, Focus on Youth
Our friend Tom Hubbard wrote this wonderful article in his website. We deeply appreciate his kind words, and hope you will read the full article on his website at Portland Metro Photographic News. The link is shown below this message from Tom.
As someone interested in the enrichment of Portland’s photographic community, you’ll be interested in and inspired by the work being done to support our area “at risk” youth using the power of photography. FOCUS ON YOUTH calls upon photography to provide focus, self-fulfillment, an appreciation for art, personal direction and a commitment to stay in school to some of our most disadvantage teens. It’s an organization doing our social work by using our photographic passion as a way of motivating and inspiring youth to realize their potential.
FOCUS ON YOUTH is an organization with a mission that we can all support. That we must support. Whether it’s monetary donations, equipment contributions, being a vocal advocate or volunteering time as a mentor, we all can play an important role in the FOCUS ON YOUTH program.
Later this week, the PMPN’s Student Gallery will feature the work of these young and deserving photographic artists. Stay tuned, and stay involved.
Your friend in photography,
Tom Hubbard
Publisher
Portland Metro Photographic News
hub@pmpnonline.com
http://www.pmpnonline.com/
