This is great, folks. Just to start with that. It has never been easy to create visual media for NGOs in a way that both sides are happy with the outcome and the way the work is financed. Most of the (especially smaller) NGOs are notoriously under-funded, so one of the biggest struggle for a photographer who works with NGOs is to put a price on his work that could be paid by the NGO. I’m not talking of big NGOs, but for the small ones it is quite often a big struggle to get a photographer/ videographer to cover their projects. So many wish to have good media, because it is the most powerful tool for their marketing. It is what catches the attention of donors, it is what allows you to show directly and personal what you do. At the same time with the internet the even before visual driven society gets more into consuming pictures. So it needs high quality media to actually catch the attention of the audience. What brings the need for great visual storytellers, something what many NGOs can’t pay for.

Bringing in the Focus for Humanity foundation. Their aim is to give opportunities to exactly this two groups, the under-funded NGOs and the photographers who would like to work with this NGOs, but maybe can’t effort to put in their value for a small fee or even for free. The foundation has a broad rack of grants and awards, from workshop possibilities for the photographers to personal training to the NGO-Pro grant that gives up to 15.000 $ for a collaboration between a photographer and one of these under-funded NGOs. It must feel like a relief for some NGOs that see the power and value of high-quality visual media, but just could not effort to pay a photographer for that. Just weeks ago i was talking with the founder of the New York-based NGO MRA Africa about it and she was fighting so much with this task as on the one hand she could see how much it would help them in many ways to have this high-quality media to promote their work, but at the same time it was not affordable for them to pay someone properly for that. For NGOs like them that do really great work with a lot of impact in the areas they work (here it is in Kenya), but have nothing really to show that, it must feel like a relief that opportunities like this are coming up. And for us as photographers it is great as well as we can truly work on projects where we have passion for and where we believe in. It is a win-win situation and my hope is that the foundation is getting a lot of support in the future to allow them to even expand their efforts. But first of all: Thanks for that and Happy Birthday!

Check the website to find more information at www.focusforhumanity.org.

By the way, if you want to see my latest NGO work: I’m now able to publish the full multimedia story about Prostitution in Rwanda for the NGO Medsar. You can check it here.