**OJOS nuevos Photo Program Takes Off**

The girls at Nuestra Señora de la Paz are camera crazy now that OJOS nuevos has finally started at their hogar. 6 girls were chosen to be part of the picture taking team, and every week the rest of the girls get a chance to shoot so that everyone feels included and can have fun with photography, too. The group has 2 days to take pictures and one day to edit. Thanks to the Puente Alto Children's Library, we are able to use their Compaq computers that have Internet and support Photoshop 7. Every week the kids select 10 prints which they either save, give away as gifts, or trade between one another. They have their own photo albums that they carry around everywhere, sharing with the staff at the hogar and their mom's who come to visit.

OJOS nuevos (NEW eyes) is the name we coined to represent all of VEGlobal's photography projects. Fellow volunteer Christine Mladic carried out the first class at the all girls hogar San Fransisco de Regis and is now at Hogar María Aldea Reina, another all girls hogar, conducting her second class. Since being able to secure the equipment, myself and the volunteers at my hogar were able to start OJOS nuevos at Nuestra Señora de la Paz the same week.

Now the cameras are in the kids' hands, they have been getting familiar with their new digital sidekicks. We have 4 PENTAX Optio E10's with 512 MB memory cards and rechargeable batteries and the other 2 cameras are rotated loaners from volunteers who are nice enough to let the kids use their cameras while sometimes coming to help out too. The first few weeks have been spent playing with the color and black and white modes, video versus making still images, and learning how to erase picture by picture instead of whole memory cards! They are practicing composition, exploring interesting ways to shoot, and looking at lighting and how it affects their photos. There is so much to shoot from photo scavenger hunts in the hogar to self-portraits.



Once they get more comfortable being photographers, we plan to take them on field trips to markets, street fairs, museums, and the downtown area. The chance to get out of the hogar, discover Santiago, and share what they see through the lens is going to be so entertaining for them. We'll be making our own picture frames, getting our picture taken professionally in a Wild West photo studio, and watching the documentary film Born Into Brothels about kids who had their own photography project in Calcutta, India. But what everyone's really looking forward to is the last week when we take a day trip to the coast to photograph in Valparaíso and go swimming at the beach!