Any developing nation striving towards improving the lives of its female population would benefit significantly from adopting appropriate means that ensure female empowerment and skills development.

Cameras For Girls is not just about photography - it's about empowering women through their passion for storytelling and allowing them to share their stories with the world. 

Joyce Kimani is a young and talented Kenyan young woman, who attended my last Cameras For Girls training in Kampala, Uganda.  She was in Uganda to earn her degree in Mass Communications and Journalism from Makerere University. This would be our last training in June 2019 before COVID hit and everything was stopped.

Since its inception in August 2017, Cameras For Girls has diligently taught photography and business skills to marginalized females endeavouring to become journalists in Africa. However, we realized we needed to pivot over the last 20 months under COVID. Thus, we built a robust video library, so our students could continue developing their photography and business skills instead of having the in-person training we could not deliver.

Brandy Valentine Azeirwe attended the Cameras For Girls' second photography training, conducted in Uganda in June 2019. At the time, she was a recent graduate from the Bachelors' degree program in Mass Communications and Journalism from Uganda Christian University in Kampala

I met Patience Natukunda in June 2019 when I embarked on my second photography training in Kampala, Uganda. Through our charity Cameras For Girls, we embark on teaching photography to females endeavouring to become journalists. 

Last week, I had the pleasure of teaching photography to 10 females from Khwela Womxn in South Africa. Khwela Womxn is an organization located in Cape Town, South Africa, similar to Cameras For Girls. Our shared goals are to empower females to reach higher and accomplish more through diversified training programs.

As a part of our initiative to keep the girls and young women in our Cameras For Girls program moving forward, I am interviewing photographers, photojournalists and documentary photographers worldwide to gather different perspectives on what motivates them in their work. Since Cameras For Girls started our journey in Uganda, I thought I would start the series off by interviewing notable Ugandan photojournalist Esther Ruth Mbabazi

Samantha Byakutaga is a 25-year-old young woman who graduated from Uganda Christian University with a Bachelor of Arts in Mass Communications Degree and a major in journalism. She was working on a contract position at Success Africa as a media and communications fellow. She has recently gotten a full-time position with the same company, which is outstanding as the country has suffered a tremendous blow from COVID, with many of the citizens suffering from unemployment.