A Weary Traveler

 

Sleeping traveler at the Doha International Airport in Qatar.

I am in the Doha International Airport waiting for my flight to Mumbai, India, where I will be staying photographing for the next two weeks.  I am participating in a 10-day photography workshop through Visual Reportage, which is run by two professional photographers Michael Hintlian and Glen Cooper.  This is their first workshop in India, and I have the opportunity to experience it with them.

We will be working with a non-profit organization called C.O.R.O. for Literacy, which began in 1989 by Sujata Khandekar to encourage adult literacy in the Chembur, Mumbai community.  Now, C.O.R.O. works directly in the field to support community development activites; has created a federation of approximately 300 grassroots organizations that address women empowerment, community leadership, adult and youth literacy; and serves as a communicator between these organizations/communities and the private and public parties that will influence the development of these local communities that C.O.R.O. supports.

To read about some programs that C.O.R.O. supports, please visit the following links (these will open into external documents):

- Literacy Project

- Community Leadership Program

In the partnership between C.O.R.O. and Visual Reportage, they will provide each of us a translator, a guide and amazing access to the communities that they work in; in exchange, we will provide them images  that Sujata plans to display in galleries throughout Mumbai as fine art, but also a conversational and educational pieces to inform the community about the urban poverty in the city and the work that C.O.R.O. is doing in the communities.