Karen Ande Photography

In a wealthy country like ours it’s hard to believe that children go hungry. Yet recent CDC surveys show that 20% of children in the USA come from families that are food insecure, that can’t afford high quality, nutritious food. In the high-rent San Francisco Bay area that statistic increases to 25%.

Yet in 2014 when this project began pediatricians in the US did not routinely screen for food insecurity. Why not? Perhaps because you can’t really tell by looking if a child is undernourished. This photography project titled “Who’s Hungry? You can’t tell by looking” was sponsored by the Northern California branch of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP). Half the children photographed came from families that have plentiful nutritious food, the other half came from families that are food insecure. To respect privacy we don’t identify who is who.

This photo educational project helped the Northern California branch of the AAP make food insecurity a priority issue. The images reached 65,000 pediatricians in online newsletters nationally. The photographs hung outside the governor’s office in Sacramento along with background information on childhood hunger. Their message impacted legislators and thousands of visitors to the building.

In 2015 the national leadership conference of the AAP passed a resolution to ensure that practicing pediatricians routinely screen for childhood hunger. In addition, members of the AAP California are finalizing an app that facilitates referral to food banks and other social service organizations. These photographs, together with the committed work of caring physicians, helped make a difference. My personal thanks to Lucy Crain, MD, MPH, FAAP, Clinical Professor of Pediatrics at the University of California, San Francisco.

In 2011 in the middle of a budget crisis the California State Legislature voted to eliminate Adult Day Health Care programs statewide. These programs provide frail seniors and disabled adults with services that allow them to continue to live at home and stay out of nursing homes. Services include nursing, physical, occupational and speech therapy, social work, lunch and an activity program.

Forward thinking officials in San Francisco stepped in with city funds to keep their centers open and work toward a solution to save the program. These clients are more than statistics on a budget office page. They are friendly, funny, crabby and unpredictable. They have pets, siblings, children and spouses. Many live alone. They have multiple health problems, not all of them visible. My intention is to give faces and names to a group of people California almost discarded.

Global Family Village is a Bay Area nonprofit that partners with local orphanages in Nepal to create traditional style group homes for children. In a country that usually warehouses children in large facilities, this represents a revolutionary change in care for orphaned and abandoned children.

The photographer spent 10 days living in their family style orphanage in Bungamati, a town near the capitol of Kathmandhu. Global Family Village aims to show that orphans can grow up as a family, feel loved and cared for and part of their community. My personal thanks to Freema Davis, founder of Global Family Village.

Ol Doinyo Lengai, “The Mountain of God” in the Maasai language is located in Tanzania, just south of Lake Natron. It is one of the few active carbonatite lava volcanos in the world. Due to its unusual composition, the lava erupts at relatively low temperatures. These photographs are from a major eruption in 2007-2008. Lake Natron is the only regular breeding area in East Africa for the region’s 2.5 million Lesser Flamingos.

Other photos are from the Suguta Valley in Kenya which is south of Lake Turkana, and the Sossusvlei Dunes, Namibia.

On March 24, 1980, Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador was assassinated as he was officiating at a memorial communion service. One week prior to the assassination, Romero told an interviewer that if he died, he would rise in the people of El Salvador. Thirty years later, he does indeed continue to live on in the people he loved. Exhibit includes images of El Salvador exploring educational projects that benefit the poor.

Karen Ande has been chronicling the AIDS epidemic and its effects on children in sub-Saharan Africa since 2002. Her work has taken her from rural villages to city slums in Kenya and Rwanda, where she photographs people who daily face the challenges of AIDS and its impact on those they know and love. She works with the very poor, with people who rarely benefit from large-scale government intervention, but are helped enormously by organizations that support the work of grassroots community activists. Nonprofits she partnered with include: Firelight Foundation, G.R.A.C.E.USA, Kenya Help, Orphan Support League, Project Baobab and Village Enterprise Fund. My personal thanks to Ruthann Richter, writer and author of our book “Face to Face: Children of the AIDS Crisis in Africa.”

Kibera, a slum on the edge of the Kenyan capital of Nairobi, is a network of garbage-strewn alleyways with no sanitation, indoor plumbing or formal electrical grid. In the first decade of the 21st century it was also fertile territory for HIV/AIDS. Many parents lost their lives to the illness, so Kibera is home to many child-headed families.

Upon the death of their parents the oldest child, often as young as only 10 or 12 themselves, is left to care for their younger brothers and sisters. These young caregivers lose their childhood and frequently their opportunity for education in the process.  Fortunately a network of community-based organizations offer programs for emotional support as well as practical support for food, school fees and rent. They also educate the youth about HIV prevention.

Saidia -- "Help!" in Swahili -- was set up as a home for children orphaned by AIDS, who either have no living relatives or were removed from abusive situations. These kids are funny, brave and true survivors. Though some were in fragile health when they arrived at Saidia, with three meals a day and access to school, they are thriving. Here are some of their stories:

Mary was found starving, so weak she couldn’t walk at her grandfather’s home. Her parents were dead of AIDS and her grandfather an alcoholic couldn’t care for her. When I finally met her at Saidia she was mischievous and loved to run from my camera giggling.

Kevin was brought to Saidia by his father who was dying of AIDS. Kevin refused to take off his green jacket because he was waiting for his daddy to pick him up and take him home. Six months later the green jacket is off and Kevin settled into the rhythm of his new home.

Patrick, Esther’s youngest brother, became an excellent student, winning prizes in his local school which he loves to show visitors.

Esther, the young girl highlighted in the portfolio “Esther’s World”, is pictured here at 17 just before she left to study tailoring in Nairobi.

For more information contact: www.orphansupportleague.org

“When I see my mother sick, I feel bad. When I find there is no food, I don’t know what to do.”  Esther, aged 13.

When I first met Esther she lived with her mother and three younger brother in a shack in the Rift valley town of Naivasha. Her mother was ravaged by AIDS-related tuberculosis. While she had medication for her TB, antiretroviral drugs were unavailable for most people in Kenya in 2004. AIDS was a death sentence, and she died three weeks after these photographs were taken. A 13 year old taking care of her dying mother and three brothers, Esther was a poster child for the effects of the epidemic on children.

Esther and her brothers found refuge at Saidia, an orphanage in Gilgil, Kenya after the death of their mom. Though an orphanage isn’t the first choice for children there was no other family in this case, and no one from the community had the resources to take them in. Esther and her brothers thrived at Saidia. Four years later Esther was off on a scholarship to learn tailoring and her youngest brother Patrick was winning academic awards in school. The Orphan Support League, orphansupportleague.org, helps support Saidia Children’s Home.

Stephen Lewis called Grannies “the heroes of Africa.” Many like Paullina and Sara, pictured here, lost their children to AIDS, and now care for their grandchildren. Paullina, for example, lost all of her 12 children to the virus, and became sole caregiver for her 16 grandchildren.

One granny I met nursing a young infant. Her daughter had died of AIDS a day after delivering the baby girl. When I asked her how she could nurse her granddaughter she replied “I have no cow.”

Another granny, determined to send her orphaned 10-year-old granddaughter to school, broke rocks for use in construction. At the equivalent of 75 cents per wheelbarrow load she managed to pay the girl’s school fees. My personal thanks to Natasha Martin of G.R.A.C.E. USA for facilitating these contacts.

Street shots and photographs of friends and family in San Francisco, CA.

Like all First Nation people, the Haida experienced generations of economic, spiritual and social suppression.  But they are moving through that pain to reclaim what is theirs—their language, their traditions and their strong ties to community and the Earth.

In July 2019, I spent two weeks in Hydaburg Alaska photographing the Haida’s annual week-long culture camp and the community’s dedication of its first cedar longhouse built since 1895.

HAIDA RISING documents the Haida’s vibrant traditions and arts, as the people celebrate their unique heritage.

In the words of a local elder: “We’ll never get back everything we lost, but we have to get back what we can. It’s all about putting the pride back in our hearts.”

Haw’aa, dang an hl kil ‘laagang Haida Cooperative Association and XKKF for the invitation to photograph your community celebrations. My experiences and lessons there were unexpected and profound.