How Three Young African Women Created Their Dreams with Cameras For Girls

Cameras For Girls teaches 15-18 young women annually in Uganda by providing a robust 4-phase curriculum combining photography, storytelling and business skills. These young women join the program through an application by the organization and their university partners, Makerere University and Uganda Christian University. Here are the stories of three students from our 2022 cohort who furthered their career goals through participation in the Cameras For Girls program.

Student reviewing their images during the 4-day Cameras For Girls workshop in Uganda

Melanie Nabukwasi

Melanie is a 24-year-old young woman who joined Cameras For Girls to become a voice for the voiceless. She graduated in May of this year and works as a communications specialist for an NGO (non-governmental agency). Her love and passion for photography and what it can do to change perceptions inspired her to write her first book – an ode to her culture and its women. She wrote this book to speak about her culture, one of 57 tribes in Uganda, and the struggles that women face within in, including the continued practice of FGM (Female Genital Mutilation) and other forms of gender-based violence.

Melanie has recently applied for an 8-month intensive security course through the Geneva Centre for Security Policy. She will benefit significantly benefit from this program because, as a communications specialist, it will provide her with a comprehensive understanding of international security issues, including geopolitical dynamics, global conflicts, emerging threats, and the role of various stakeholders in maintaining security. 

Melanie stands out because of her tenacity to overcome and her ability to support the other girls in the program. Her future is very bright, and we can’t wait to see where our training, coupled with the additional training she will take down the road, will enable her to reach her goals.

Melanie at her book launch in Uganda

Lydia Felly Akullu

Lydia joined the Cameras For Girls program while completing an internship with The Media Challenge Fellowship Program, given to 15 students across Africa who exemplify what it is to be a change agent. Lydia is a journalist looking to change the negative stereotypes about what it is to be African.

She got a job with Nation Media a few months after starting with Cameras For Girls, and by the time our main program started to wind down (students always have the opportunity to stay engaged with us), she had written and published 50 stories, with one of the latest ones being about Cameras For Girls. See the article HERE.

Lydia’s goals are to use the photography skills she gained through us to shape public opinion, especially about women and their crucial role in making the world better.

Lydia in the middle of the other Cameras For Girls students

 Catherine Nakirya

Catherine was always the first student to submit her assignments and the first of her cohort’s 15 young women to venture into the field and tell her story through photos and video. She figured out how to use the camera we gave her to film and interview a young boy breaking rocks from early morning to late evening so that he could afford his school fees. This was well ahead of the video training to be delivered through one of our partners in Uganda.

 Catherine currently works with an NGO in Uganda in the field of communications to pay the bills. Her ambition is to combine her photography and writing skills to get a job in journalism and work for a prominent media house. While applying for journalism positions, she continues to improve her photography skills and has shown the other girls that you can achieve anything with a lot of hard work.

Catherine Nakirya during our 4-day Cameras For Girls workshop in Uganda

These are just three of the forty-seven incredibly young women we have been fortunate to train through our 4-phase photography and business skills curriculum. To learn more about Camera For Girls and how you can empower young women like Melanie, Lydia, and Catherine, please visit https://www.camerasforgirls.org/get-involved.