Able Voices - Bangladesh (2004-2005)
Location: India and South Asia, Bangladesh
Keywords:
Project Background
In partnership with
Healthlink Worldwide
Photography by disabled youth in Bangladesh
Dhaka, Bangladesh 2004
Financed and commissioned by Healthlink Worldwide ( www.healthlink.org.uk ) this project is part of a wider initiative, funded by DFID, which aims to increase the influence of grassroots disabled people over social policies, practices and public attitudes in Africa and Asia.
PhotoVoice, in conjunction with Healthlink Worldwide, ran photographic training workshops in Dhaka, Bangladesh to train fifteen young people with disabilities in photographic skills. Two photographic workshops were held in February and May 2004 with the Bangladeshi NGO SARPV (Social Assistance and Rehabilitation for the Physically Vulnerable). Using simple point and shoot cameras the participants returned to their home villages (across Bangladesh) during the interim period to capture their own individual experiences and needs.
A small exhibition aiming to raise awareness about disability issues and to affect policy change, through the voices of disabled people themselves was held on the 13th May 2004 and was considered the first of its kind in Bangladesh. The participants’ disabilities ranged from total blindness to visual impairment and mental disability, learning difficulty to physical disability. Whilst each participant faced different challenges on a daily basis, the group was united in its effort to draw attention through photography to the needs, views and wishes of people with disabilities across Bangladesh.
A larger exhibition was held in Bangladesh during Chobimela ( www.chobimela.org - an international photographic festival organised by www.drik.net ) and the photographs were also displayed in London at The Atrium, DFID (Department for International Development), 1 Palace Street, W1 SW1E 5HE for UN International Disability Day Friday 3rd December, 2004.
London VisitPhotoVoice and Healthlink Worldwide went on to run a second set of workshops with disabled people in Cameroon, and in 2005 PhotoVoice supported a project run by photographer Maria Stott with two disabled people living in a care home in London. Photographs from all three of these projects were displayed at an exhibition in London in December 2006, entitled Able Voices.
Two participants from Able Voices Bangladesh, Rozina Akter and Chen Banu, flew to London to attend the opening night of the exhibition and to talk about their photos and their experiences with visitors. During their visit they were given the opportunity to take photographs in central London and show how they viewed the city and the differences that exist between Bangladesh and the UK for disabled people.