Lensational

1. What problem are we committed to solving?

Access  to basic human rights for young girls and women.

2. What solution are we proposing?

Photojournalism training for emotional and economic empowerment and advocacy on social injustices faced by girls and women.

3. How could our solution positively change lives if it is scaled globally?

We have three main project objectives, linked to our Theory of Change
(1) Emotional Empowerment and Skills Development;
(2) Economic Empowerment and Access to Resources;
(3) Advocacy and Political Participation.

The cycle of poverty among girls and women.

Kenya ranks 104 out of 144 countries in literacy gender parity, a score of 0.88 against the ideal of 1.0. 26 out of 47 counties in the country have register a net attendance for girls in secondary school below the national average of 40%.

The majority of girls and women in slums and marginalized communities  in Kenya are destined to live a life of poverty and cultural oppression.These girls face many obstacles to get an education, and most of those are related to the high level of poverty. And although primary education is free, a family still holds the responsibility of paying for textbooks and uniforms which are considered exorbitant expenses by these families who live off of daily wages. Moreover, if a child is going to school, it also means that they are not spending time contributing to the family’s income. This is particularly worse for girls living in these under-served communities where in addition to economic barriers many girls living in these areas are faced by cultural barriers such as early marriages and circumcision where they are expected to marry early and join their husband’s family. 

We provide free photojournalism training to girls and women in marginalized and low-income communities. 

We have three main objectives, linked to our Theory of Change
(1) Emotional Empowerment and Skills Development;

We begin by providing a hands on training program from Basic, through Intermediary to Advanced training in photography and narration. Often time the girls we engage live in oppressive states where their freedom of choice or expression is not exercised.The exploratory nature of our training facilitates the creation of their own, self-determined identities. The three phases of our curriculum also allows for in-depth skill development that molds their confidence and prepares them for the world of work.
(2) Economic Empowerment;

Each phase of the program has expected outcomes which allow our students to take on photo projects. We in turn provide a platform for them to sell these images while they continue to learn.By the end of the course our participants are equipped not only to explore freelancing photography but other careers in photojournalism.
(3) Advocacy.

Our program also takes place within the communities that the girls live in, so as to frame their stories within that context which allows for their stories to begin important conversations on a community level

Underprivileged Girls and Young women.

For most of the communities we target girls and women make up fort roughly half the main populations. Most of these communities are heavily patriarchal which means that girls in start a life of unpaid work and family responsibilities as young as four, are arranged into marriage in their teenage years either due to culture or poverty, and start having babies soon after that. The great majority of these women are destined to live a whole life uneducated, lacking basic human rights, with low self-image, no agency over decisions affecting her body, life or livelihood, and, with no hope of any way out.

We engage our target students through communities based organisations that are already working in the areas we target. We begin our program through fact finding trips aimed at understanding if our proposed solution fits their immediate needs and gaining insight on how we could better tailor our training to fit their needs.

We also offer the free training as an alternative incentive for families and parents who are motivated to sell their daughters off for marriage as an economic reason and thus disrupt systems of early marriages. 

Increase the number of girls and young women participating in formal and informal learning and training. 

 Economically, women only earn one-tenth of the world's income. One of the predominant reasons for economic inequality is that women spend 2 to 10 times more time on unpaid care responsibilities than men. Emotionally, they are often barred from expressing themselves not only because two-thirds of the global illiterate population are women, but because of our inherited patriarchal system. Some women’s voices are rarely heard due to structural and societal barriers. In this context, photography can serve as a tool that transcends these barriers.

At Lensational, we believe that photography can be a universal communication tool that overcomes the language barriers separating humanity. This allows outsiders who possess limited understanding of the women’s day-to-day conditions in their environment to have a more accurate understanding of their realities. Most importantly, in a context where women are often framed and portrayed under the dominant male gaze, equipping women with photographic skills allows them to increase their sense of agency and to reclaim self-hood and identities.

In this context of inequality, the art of photography can function as a tool for cultivating creativity, freedom and even power while documenting lives and communicating them to the world. Teaching women photography allows them to reverse unequal power dynamics, facilitating the creation of own, self-determined identities. The exploratory, fluid process of photography enables women to embrace the multiplicities of their identities as mothers, sisters, daughters, partners, friends, colleagues, and most importantly, as individuals.

In an increasingly digitalised and interconnected world, sharing photographs transcends many geographical barriers. Moreover, photography jobs are often freelance in nature. For the majority of women who have to attend to care responsibilities, they can take pictures at home, overcoming mobility constraints while structuring photography around care responsibilities. Thanks to the internet, social media, and various other digital platforms, photographers have the possibility to increase the access to their pictures and potentially even sell them through digital channels, providing a means for women to become economically empowered.

Our solution use cameras as tools of exploration and online platforms from social media to websites to share the images with the world.

Photo voices is a process by which people can identify, represent and enhance their community through a specific photographic technique. As a practice based in the production of knowledge, photo voices has three main goals. 

1. to enable people to record and reflect their community's strengths and concerns, 2. to promote critical dialogue and knowledge about important issues through large and small discussions of the photographs and 3,. to reach policy makers.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/109019819702400309

We have three main objectives, linked to our Theory of Change
(1) Emotional Empowerment and Skills Development;

We begin by providing a hands on training program from Basic, through Intermediary to Advanced training in photography and narration. Often time the girls we engage live in oppressive states where their freedom of choice or expression is not exercised.The exploratory nature of our training facilitates the creation of their own, self-determined identities. The three phases of our curriculum also allows for in-depth skill development that molds their confidence and prepares them for the world of work.

Outputs: students gain competency in various aspects of photography including professional photography, anatomy of a good story and different types of photography.
(2) Economic Empowerment;

Each phase of the program has expected outcomes which allow our students to take on photo projects. We in turn provide a platform for them to sell these images while they continue to learn.By the end of the course our participants are equipped not only to explore freelancing photography but other careers in photojournalism.

Outputs: students will be able to earn income from their skills.
(3) Advocacy.

Our program also takes place within the communities that the girls live in, so as to frame their stories within that context which allows for their stories to begin important conversations on a community level

Outputs: raising keys issues that dominate our target communities and reach policy and decision makers

We have trained u to 800 women, this year we made the decision to focus on depth as opposed to breadth of impact and therefore we are currently serving 20 young women here in Kenya

In one year it should be able to reach at least 50 girls

In five years in Kenya only we should have reached at least 500 - 1000 girls if we are able to scale our resources.

1. Focus on depth of Impact

This is by evolving our curriculum to focus on sustainable skill development and prepare our students for the market

2. Financial sustainability

Lensational life cycle is as follows - train selected girls / women for training; create emotional empowerment for the students; capture beautiful content and inspiring stories; share with the world to attract donations / partnerships / purchases; financially empower the students and train more. If we get this right then we should be able to teach more, sell more, teach more, sell more, and keep growing

3. Grow the team

Currently we only have one paid staff while the rest work on a volunteer basis. As we generate more income and grow financially we should be able to absorb more volunteers as staff and especially in our programme countries.

Financial barriers - no steady/ fixed source of income for the organisation

1. Improve the quality of our training programmes to well equip our students to document high quality  content and inspiring stories that we can share with the world to attract donations / partnerships / purchases

2. By improving our programmes, also demonstrate the depth of impact in our work that will attract funders and investors

3. Localisation - After 7 years of organic development and having the organisation set up in the UK, in January 2020, we made the decision to invest more resources in Kenya as one of our 3 regional hubs.

1 - full time paid staff

1 - part -time staff

11 - volunteers

5 - advisors

Lensational is a global movement of people, who believe passionately in women and girls being represented, as opposed to Lensational being defined purely as a social enterprise.

This distinction was a conscious decision, which we articulated back in 2017, after trying to pursue traditional social enterprise growth via revenue. At that point, impact growth was our primary driver, and thus, our structure was different from a more traditional social enterprise, which defines growth of impact through revenue growth.

We have consciously decided to take a collective leadership approach, rather than a Founder-centric approach. This means we are disqualified from some funding opportunities that require the founder to be working on the venture full time.

However, it is a model that allows us to preserve our community and participatory ethos, while taking advantage of talented women who have a range of roles and networks to contribute.

When Lensational scaled organically to reaching 23 countries in 2018, we did not think about how the community could truly own what we are doing. As most of our funders are based in the UK, we centralised operations in the UK instead, through our charity, and as part of that process, the decision-making for our global activities was largely concentrated in London.

But learning about platform cooperativism has led us a different way. We now have created a structure that is light at the top (a Minimum Viable Board), and instead, that seeks to channel as many resources to the grassroots as possible through localisation.

1. Implementation partners

These are the partners who help us organise our programmes in the field and who often give us access to the communities we are targettung. Currently we have partnered with 

a) Safe Spaces organisation that offers informal training to girls through sports and art

b) Blink International that is a research organisation in low income areas who want to apply photography as a learning tool as well as disrupt harmful practices amongst young girls who are currently not in school.

2. Dissemination Partners

This are the partners who we partner with to share information, provide visibility and sell our images.

a) Getty Images which sells stock photography

b) Azckia Foundation that supports social impact projects by sharing their stories.

Lensational life cycle is as follows - train selected girls / women for training; create emotional empowerment for the students; capture beautiful content and inspiring stories; share with the world to attract donations / partnerships / purchases; financially empower the students and train more. If we get this right then we should be able to teach more, sell more, teach more, sell more, and keep growing.