ProjectFocus Hawai’i, Inc., a non-profit Hawai`i corporation, was founded in 2005 on the premise that everyone needs a voice, and no one needs it more than a child who has much to say. At ProjectFocus Hawai’i, we use photography to teach at-risk children to express and gain perspective on their experiences. In doing so, we enhance self-esteem, self-awareness, and self-reflection, all critical components in fostering the resilience necessary to make a fulfilling life from challenging ingredients.
In partnership with a different non-profit organization each year, ProjectFocus Hawai‘i conducts an annual twelve-week photographic internship for a maximum of fourteen at-risk children, ages ten through eighteen. Over the course of the internship, the children are both the subjects and photographers. Their hard work culminates in a series of public exhibits, staged to a professional standard, that are held at multiple island venues. Participants receive their photographs and a coffee table book containing their collective images. This year’s non-profit partner is Hale Kipa.
Laurie Callies and Lisa Uesugi are professional children’s photographers and co-founders of ProjectFocus Hawai`i, Inc. On a volunteer basis, they raise all funding and oversee and run all aspects of ProjectFocus Hawai‘i’s twelve-week internship.
“The Resilient Spirit”
The path to adulthood is never easy. Most of us walk it with the help and guidance of those who love us most: our families.
Imagine having to go through much, or all, of your childhood without them—without the steady presence of people you have always known.
The photographers who created this exhibit are children who are in foster care. They are survivors. Their families are either absent or in crisis. Every child in foster care has already survived tougher circumstances, and made more difficult choices than most people will face in our lifetimes. These children have often endured physical, mental, or sexual abuse. In some cases, foster children can pass through twenty homes before they reach adulthood.
These young people are often called “at-risk,” but to them, the risk is finished: the things they feared most have already come to pass. They have lost much, but they are still rich in at least one thing: time. And with time, which has been called the healer of all wounds, comes hope. This exhibit is a visual representation of their resilient spirits.
Foster children have become doctors, lawyers, professional sports players, artists, teachers, and loving mothers and fathers. The difference is, and has always been, whether responsible and caring adults reach out to them and help provide them with the tools they need to make a positive transition to adulthood.
Imagine this: on their 18th birthday, some of these children will walk into the adult world with nothing but a plastic bag filled with their belongings and what their heads and hearts contain. Yet if they have hope, they can have everything.
Having a positive vision of the future and a way to focus that vision—a vocation, a set of skills, a voice—is one of the most precious and enduring gifts anyone can receive. You can help these young people find a future they like the look of.