Hard-to-reach,
underserved, disengaged—no matter the terminology, every
community coalition must address ways to engage and empower
groups of people in their community that are rarely considered.
Often, these are found in the poorest sections of a community
and more often, they have been neglected and disenfranchised
for so long that they are distrustful of attempts to bring change
their neighborhoods—even if the change is for the better.
Learning about these audiences is not easy. But some participatory
research methods are providing ways to empower community members,
to make their voices heard, and to better understand what makes
neighborhoods tick. One such method is Photovoice, a method
that uses photography to capture the voices and visions of community
members.
The method has been
used in a variety of settings to conduct research on diverse
populations. According to evaluators, “Photovoice has
proven itself to be a highly flexible tool for carrying out
needs assessments, asset mapping and participatory program evaluations.”
Recently, evaluators
looked at a W.K. Kellogg Foundation project dubbed Yes we can!
The community-building initiative focused on seven distressed
neighborhoods ( characterized by high levels of poverty and
poor educational outcomes for youth) in Battle Creek, Mich.
Photovoice was used to help understand what residents valued
or felt was good about their lives, what they felt needed to
change, and how they thought change happens or could happen.
The Photovoice process
involved providing cameras and film to a diverse group of community
members who then took photographs around their neighborhoods.
Each week, the photographers selected several photos that they
found meaningful to write about in response to a series of questions.
Weekly discussions with groups of participants were held. In
addition to offering reflections on the photos each person selected,
the group selected five photos to discuss.
Evaluators found that participants
identified three key impacts: increased self-competence, emergent
critical awareness of one’s environment and cultivation
of resources for social and political action. |
For
example, one youth participant commented:
“I went around my neighborhood and took pictures of
stuff that I didn’t want to go on…because I don’t
like it…I wanna do something that can prevent it—so
it can stop. We won’t let drugs or anything like that
be on my street or anywhere else around the neighborhood…”
In their evaluation,
the researchers noted that Photovoice empowered participants to
acknowledge and share their expertise in three important ways:
- A strong normative
stance that “your story is important and you life is
of value” was conveyed to participants at multiple times
and ways throughout the project;
- The process of
giving participants complete narrative autonomy in capturing
and selecting the images they wanted to share and in determining
the stories they wanted others to hear empowered them to “tell
their story as they wanted it told.”
- The visual element
of Photovoice provided participants with both a tangible means
for communicating their message and an indelible image of
their experiences.
Said one participant:
“It gave everybody a voice, you know. We all could
actually go in there and say what we wanted to say and people
would listen and so that was the best thing.”
Perhaps most important
from a community perspective, is that the Photovoice method
does not emphasize building consensus across participants. As
a result, the researchers stated, participants developed a deeper
understanding of their neighborhoods and shared understanding
about community life. The findings indicate that the insights
did not replace participants’ perspectives, but instead
broadened them.
As one participant
explained:
“I did learn from a lot of other people’s perspectives.
Everybody can look at the same thing and see something totally
different. I didn’t go in looking for that, but that’s
what I came out with.” |
