Photography volunteer program in Cape Town

Environment

We believe in the power of photography; the power to create incredible experiences, and the power to make a positive impact. That’s why we founded our Trust, a non-profit organisation that uses photography to make a positive impact on both a social and conservation level. Our photo tours finance the running costs of the Trust, so by just by joining one of our workshops, you're indirectly contributing. (So all you have to do to make a difference is have the photo adventure of a lifetime!) Through the Trust, we provide free professional photography to charities doing environmental and conservation work; images they can use for fundraising and communication purposes.

Waste Management:
We try to use products, services and food that have the least impact on the waste management of the country we are travelling in. If waste is generated and cannot be immediately recycled or disposed of, we transport it with us to the best location for proper disposal or recycling. We firmly believe in only leaving footprints behind. For this particular trip, we can ensure that we'll be avoiding all single-use plastics.

At our office in Cape Town, we recycle, compost, and minimise the use of paper by predominantly working with digital files.

Carbon Footprint Compensation:
To compensate for our carbon footprint, we sponsor a tree for each participant, which is planted by Greenpop in their reforestation or urban greening programs in Southern Africa. We'll give you a ‘tree ring,’ a key ring that has the coordinates of their tree, so that you know exactly where it’s growing.

Community

Apart from supporting conservation initiatives through our photography, we also support social nonprofits. We provide free professional photography to charities that do valuable work and can use the images for fundraising purposes.

Through our Trust, we also run PhotoVoice workshops for youth in underprivileged South African communities. We identify talented young individuals with an interest in and talent for photography, and provide workshops where we encourage them to tell their stories, and the stories of their communities, through photography. We teach them creative self-expression, and the power visual images can have. Participants are encouraged to raise awareness about issues that matter most to them, which stimulates positive activism.

How Volunteers Contribute:
More importantly, participants on this program offer hands-on support to the Heart of a Woman Project, a project that teaches mobile photography and social media skills to women who run important social impact programs in their communities. Participants will also be visiting and photographing a number of other nonprofit organisations in Cape Town's townships, and they'll donate some of the images to these organisations, so that they have additional visual tools to raise awareness for their work.

Supporting Local Economy:
All operational staff members on the ground are locals, who get consistent training opportunities, comfortable accommodation, healthy food, and fair wages and working conditions.

Cultural Photography:
We approach cultural and portrait photography carefully and ethically. We make sure our clients are thoroughly educated on local cultures, and on approaching people in a non-intrusive way.

Accommodation:
We always use accommodation that is a mix between the best location for the photographic work that we are doing, and which benefits the local community. As a result we tend not to use large international hotel groups, but rather rely on locally owned accommodation. We avoid any accommodation that we believe is exploitative of either the local people or of the environment.