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Changing lives, one click at a time

By WAVENEY ANN MOORE
Published November 11, 2006

	From left, Nancy McGirr, Karen Janeth Avila Roldan and Yamilett Roxana Salvador Ramirez visit Great Explorations: the Children's Museum Thursday afternoon.
[Times photo: Dirk Shadd]

ADVERTISEMENT [Photo by Yamilett Roxana Salvador Ramirez] This 2003 photo, In the Market Where Mother Works, is from the Fotokids exhibit at the Studio@620. Ramirez was 10 when she took the photograph.

ST. PETERSBURG - For two teenage girls from Guatemala, it has been an awesome week: an airplane flight, city lights, supermarket visits and a shopping excursion to buy gifts, all packaged in a first-time trip to the United States.

The girls are from poor families. Karen Janeth Avila Roldan is 14. The roof on her Guatemala City home is made of tin.

Yamilett Roxana Salvador Ramirez, 13, lives with five family members in one room with two beds and a stove.

The teenagers are in the United States for a photography exhibit that includes their work. They are part of Fotokids, a program that teaches desperately poor children in Guatemala and nearby Honduras photography, video, advertising and computer imaging. The aim is to help them escape poverty.

The children's photographs are of their world:, a ramshackle hut, an aunt sniffing glue, little boys smiling with their dogs. The exhibit at the Studio@620 in St. Petersburg will continue through Nov. 18.

For Karen and Yamilett, this trip has brought exciting experiences. They are staying in downtown St. Petersburg and have enjoyed exploring Publix. They've shopped at Target and have visited local schools and homes. Today, they go to the Gulf of Mexico.

Earlier this week, they sat down with Nancy McGirr, the former Reuters photojournalist who started the program, to talk about their experiences. Yamilett thinks St. Petersburg "is a very happy place," while Karen is intrigued with the white sand on Spa Beach.

McGirr, 56, began Fotokids in 1991. In the 1980s, she was covering the civil war in El Salvador. Her life changed after two colleagues were killed in 1989. "I went to Guatemala to reassess and think about what happened," she said. "I went to Guatemala with the idea of getting involved in the community."

She befriended two Catholic nuns who worked with families living in Guatemala City's municipal dump. One of the nuns suggested that she teach a handful of the children photography. "I thought I would do it for six months to a year," she said.

The program, originally called "Out of the Dump," took off when a friend saw the photographs. He got Konica in Japan to sponsor the project. A show in London followed, and it just kept rolling, McGirr said.

Today there are 87 children in the program. Thirteen of them are in college. A pair at a time, the children have traveled around the world to display their work. "It opens up their eyes," McGirr said.

Yamilett and Karen have been kept busy since they arrived in St. Petersburg a week ago, said Bob Devin Jones, an artistic director and founder of the Studio@620 "They got to see how our culture occurs. I think they are naturally inquisitive, so this has been a boon to them," he said.

Chris Eaton, a Studio@620 board member, agreed. "They've been taking photos nonstop," he said. "You forget they are two teenage girls that have never seen anything like this. They've never been to the United States, they've never seen any of this stuff. The stories that they will tell their families."

Waveney Ann Moore can be reached at 892-2283 or moore@sptimes.com.

[Last modified November 11, 2006, 07:46:43]