Photographer Jens Honore regularly does some incredible work with SOS Children’s Villages. He had the opportunity to help once again just before the new year. Take look at some of these new images and his experience of photographing that kind of poverty. The realities of these people's situation and the good that comes from donating your time, efforts, and work.
Where have you recently been shooting?
I shot in the SOS’s villages in Nairobi and Eldoret. Numerous neighborhoods in Kibera. And in a slum area in Eldoret.
How did you get in touch with the organization?
I made a book (Goodbye to a Black and White World) about the 2015 UN millennium goals. The money from the sales of the book was donated to SOS Children’s Villages and I also had additional books printed, which are still being sold on the Danish SOS web-shop. Since I really like the work SOS is doing around the world, the CEO at the time, Hanne Rasmussen, and I agreed on an ongoing process where I would donate my work to SOS by photographing the activities and environments the organization are involved in. The images are made available for all SOS offices world wide, with no restrictions.
What has been the best part?
There has been two best parts.
1. To see it matters to help.
2. To experience my photography being used in such sensible ways.
What has been the hardest part?
Children are innocent and still they pay the highest price.
Do you have a favorite image(s)? Why?
No, not really. Every time I return home from a trip and have to edit I find it very hard to pick my favorites. But generally I find the portraits to be the strongest images. But an older image of the girl photographed in Ethiopia is one of my favorites. It also was used on the cover on the last edition of the annual report.
Any stories?
Many:-) Every time I travel for SOS I get emotionally engaged and some times find it hard to grasp the hardness of poverty.
This trip to Kenya I meet a woman who was part of the FSP. She’s was a single mother with 3 small children. Her husband left her shortly after she gave birth to their third child. She had a hard time making ends meet, also because she’s disabled with some kind of back issue and walks with a cane. SOS has helped her financial so she could buy a sewing machine and start up a small business to support her family. Her appreciation was real. Her smile and attitude was real. On our way out of the slums we happened to pass her and I waved to her and she waved back and gave me that smile once again. Like to tell me, she is in a good place and will get by. Such an inspiration.
Anything else you would like to share?
The day I don’t get touched or feel that same joy, I shouldn’t be doing this. However I couldn’t see it ever being that way. Luckily.
But I hope my little contribution can change what some people think of the poor people I meet and being helped through SOS programs - that somehow they end up in these situation by choice. That somehow it is a deliberately choice and if you just work hard enough you’ll make it. I see what extreme poverty does to people and why they some times do desperate things.
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