BRIDGES to Understanding

Published: October 11, 2006
By Cheryl Crow, communications director, BRIDGES to Understanding

For many of us, digital photography is an end in itself. We find intrinsic rewards in the creative process and delight in using the most cutting edge tools to refine our craft. However, for many local Seattle students and their peers in indigenous communities around the world, digital photography is a crucial tool for promoting cross-cultural understanding and connections across geographical divides.

These students are part of a unique and innovative program sponsored by the Seattle-based nonprofit BRIDGES to Understanding. Created by world-renowned humanitarian photographer Phil Borges, BRIDGES connects classrooms around the world through digital photography and storytelling, live interactions, and teacher-mediated text exchanges.

The goal of BRIDGES is to use new interactive communication tools to help students learn not just about the world, but to engage directly with the world. In addition to reading about the Tibetan conflict in their textbooks, for example, children in BRIDGES classrooms can engage directly with students in the Tibetan Children's Village in Dharamsala, India. The children can watch the digital stories created by their peers about life in Dharamsala and see anything from daily chores to after-school soccer tournaments. Then, the students can use the BRIDGES interactive online forum and tools from the International Education and Resource Network to ask questions about one another's lives and form bonds over shared interests. The stories generally fall under three content areas: "Culture and Traditions," "Environmental Sustainability," and "Conflict and Resolution."

The field of digital storytelling is still emerging and hard to define. Leslie Rule of the Digital Storytelling Association defines it as, "The modern expression of the ancient art of storytelling. Digital stories derive their power by weaving images, music, narrative, and voice together, giving deep dimension and vivid color to characters, situations, experiences, and insights." For many organizations such as the Bay Area Video coalition, digital storytelling serves to engage and empower at-risk youth. For others, digital storytelling is a therapeutic tool or a means of increasing multimedia literacy. For BRIDGES, digital storytelling is a means to connect people across cultures and see for a moment through someone else's eyes.

Most recently, South African students engaged in an exchange with 8th grade students at Washington Middle school in Seattle, with a focus on the topic of "conflict and reconciliation," something South Africans have had a great deal of experience with. Students exchanged views with each other and used digital stories to share experiences. One Washington Middle school student stated upon reflection, "They had a whole lot of hardship, there's been a whole lot of pain and suffering, and to forgive somebody is astonishing... It knocked me to the roof."

The program is sustained by the help of volunteer mentors who travel with Borges and other well-known photographers and digital storytelling experts around the world on BRIDGES workshops. These mentors range from retired schoolteachers to professional photographers to college students looking for a meaningful spring break activity. During the workshops, the volunteers learn the tools of digital storytelling and then mentor local students in creating their stories. After our most recent workshop, volunteer mentor Daphne Guericke wrote:

"This past weekend was just awesome, rich, and inspiring in so many wonderful ways. I feel blessed having had the opportunity to be with the amazing kids from South Africa and to work with them so closely. I still feel Akhona's warm head resting on my arm...they hold a special place in my heart."

These stories are created on computers generously lent from Microsoft and on software donated by Adobe.

This year, BRIDGES is working intensively with groups of teachers and classrooms of students in more than a twenty highly diverse Puget Sound schools, helping them form connections with students in schools located in Guatemala, Peru, India, South Africa, and the Middle East. In each of these locations locally and internationally, BRIDGES provides on-site digital storytelling workshops, and on-going assistance to ensure that students engage in rich dialogue, learning about each other and sharing perspectives on issues and their lives.

The BRIDGES model is school-based and relies on partnerships with international businesses (Adobe and Getty Images), international organizations (iEARN and Amy Biehl Foundation), and state and national education ministries (Washington's Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction and the Egypt National Education Ministry). BRIDGES is unique in promoting high-engagement international communication and devising a school-based international business-supported strategy. BRIDGES is working to bring the strategy to a scale that can have a substantial impact world-wide.

Ironically, even with the technologies that enable us to communicate and connect across cultures, our inability to resolve conflict and understand one another continues to grow. We know that the development of empathy skills—that unique set of human abilities that helps us understand one another—is a key ingredient to creating a more peaceful, just world. Yet how can we do this across cultures in a systemic, scalable way so it can make a real difference? BRIDGES to Understanding was created precisely for this purpose. Thanks to help from Microsoft and other generous organizations, we will continue helping youth understand each other using emerging technologies such as digital storytelling for years to come.