The Great Escape to India - Countdown 2 days

It's been a few years since I've had an overseas adventure and I am very excited and a bit nervous about this one. Stepping way out of my box and going to a place I've had on my bucket list for many years. Opportunity arose as a photographic workshop/holiday and I jumped at the chance to go. It will be a whirlwind tour that will surely have many highs and some lows and I am impatiently waiting to get travelling. Let's hope I avoid more than one Delhi belly instance and rabid monkeys! There will be lots of stopping and shooting and am really looking forward to a trip dedicated to travel photography. On a much more serious note, the purpose of this trip is to "give back" through photography. I am travelling with "The Giving Lens" and I have taken the liberty of taking an excerpt of the website description and inserting below to better explain the goal of this photographic workshop. The Giving Lens is partnering with the Dalit Freedom Network and I want their story to be heard to anyone I know and even farther so please feel free to share this blog link and any future posts of this trip. The workshop part is only in Hyderabad for 3 days and the rest of the time is travelling with 3 other photographers. "They are called The Dalits, which means "Untouchables." They exist from a caste system that is long abolished in the country of India, and yet, in many towns, villages and slums remains very much in tact, beliefs and social values passed from an older generation. The Dalits are the lowest caste. They are believed to not have souls, and are considered less than dogs. They are spiritually tainted, and to even cross their shadow is to become impure, let alone to accidentally touch one, or share a cup, or sit where one has sat. Those who are persecuted are denied nearly every basic human right one can imagine. Not just health care, or basic housing, or education - more than that, they're denied hope, dignity, and a future. Dalit men are enslaved to do only the most degrading or backbreaking jobs, for meager pay that can never support a family. The majority of Dalit children cannot attend schools with children of higher castes, as to make them unclean. Dalit women and girls are often trafficked or sold into prostitution, the one time they are not "untouchable" - girls, as young as 3, or 5. They number two hundred and fifty million. If they were a country, they would be the 5th largest in the world, just behind the USA. That's 250,000,000. Two hundred and fifty million men, women, and children who do battle every day to just survive, to feed their children if they can, and eek out an existence that offers little hope, little chance of anything better. Therefore we are extremely passionate and moved to partner with Dalit Freedom Network, our TGL: India partner non-profit. DFN exists to break the cycle of oppression and enslavement and poverty by educating Dalit children, and empowering Dalit men and women. The main endeavour of DFN is to build schools which open their doors to all children, to raise up passionate teachers who are indifferent to caste or status, and to educate, empower and inspire Dalit children. As we've seen before, education is the ultimate key to breaking these seemingly unbreakable poverty cycles. We will come alongside DFN to do a number of things. We will document their work, as their schools are expanding and growing at a rapid rate. We will train the staff to take better portraits of the children, whose photos accompany their information in hopes of sponsorship. We will take a group of older students and do mini-workshops which we hope will inspire them to know that their story is worth telling."

Planned Dates

Oct 31, 2013 to Nov 17, 2013

Countries

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