My Work | Editorial & Humanitarian Photographer, Heber Vega.

Working for the Family Center in Rapareen – Iraq

Beside being a photographer, I am also a humanitarian aid worker. I’m currently working on a wide variety of developmental programs. The last couple weeks I’ve been photographing our work through a Family Center, located in northern Iraq. In that Center we provide different social programs to the local community. As you probably have read it before, I’ve committed my life to assisting the Iraqis in the reconstruction of their country.

Our English classes at the Center seem to be very popular, with 6 of them going on right now! There are 138 students currently enrolled in the two-month program. Students receive two hours of instruction a week and then have listening, reading, and writing activities to do at home.

One of our most popular classes still continues, with Henry (kak Bakhtyar) in charge. He teaches mostly women and a few teens the art of making beautiful things for the home.

We have two classes going on in our computer lab, and they’re full with 30 students. Most of the students don’t have a computer in their home, so this is the only practice that they get. Hardy teaches them about basic Windows applications, Microsoft Office, and even PhotoShop, which the students LOVE!

© Heber Vega | Help-4 | Computers Program

Dra. Miriam and her assistant, Shno are busy seeing patients 5 days a week at our Center in Rapareen. Each day, they have 5 30-minute appointments where they do a variety of treatments, ranging from teeth cleanings, fillings, and pulling teeth, and ALWAYS education on dental hygiene, as some patients who come in have never brushed their teeth! The patients are either students in one of our other programs, or the family members of a student in our program. These two are creating HEALTHY SMILES in the town of Rapareen!

Peri is also another new, and very popular, teacher at the Center. She is our sewing teacher (a Kurd), and in addition to teaching the ever-popular beginning class, she has used her skills as a professional tailor to add a class in making tailored clothing for outside of the home. This class has advanced-level skills and includes pattern making and custom-fit tailoring, a very useful skill for the women in Rapareen!

You can follow our work at:
www.hebervega.com/help-4

Photographs from Prosperity Candle – Slideshow

Photographs from my assignment with Prosperity Candle

After yesterday’s post, some of my friends and readers were asking for more photographs of this assignment, so I have uploaded a bunch in Flickr and here you have a short slideshow. I hope you like them, but even more, I do hope that you can help these women by purchasing one of those beautiful hand made candles! (If you haven’t read The Story of Waffa go to the last Blog post).
Peace.

Prosperity Candle and the story of Waffa…

You don’t believe in social media? Don’t value having a Flickr account, per se?
No, today I’m NOT going to talk about the power of networking on the Internet, but I AM going to tell you the story behind my last assignment. How is that related to social media? Well, the way I met the client in my last assignment, a wonderful organization, was through my Flickr stream. Yes! That same account that many pros dislike or don’t put any effort into! My clients told me, “We Googled ‘Photographs Iraq’ and your stream came up. What a great way to motivate my efforts in social media!

So, I worked for a couple of days for this social enterprise call Prosperity Candle, an organization that has been working very hard to establish their work in Iraq. They have set up a program to help female entrepreneurs in Baghdad, one of the most affected areas in this country. They have created a wonderful business based on manufacturing candles that are, of course, hand made by hard working Iraqi women with the desire to assist their own families in these hard economic times.

Right now they have 50 women already making an income for their families, which is really encouraging in places like Baghdad. They have been able to bring necessary funds for families in needed places. These families have been affected by war, dictatorship, terrorism, divisionism, etc. Now they have to work hard just to have food in their tables and send their children to school, one of the few assets that’s remaining after all that they’ve been through. I feel really humbled by these women, because they have suffered a lot but they keep trying, they keep working hard, because they believe there’s still hope for this country and especially for their families.

The assignment was in conjunction with Jeremy Courtney, a talented videographer who’s also a great humanitarian worker with a foundation created by him called the Preemptive Love Coalition. The plan was to create a video and photographs based on 5 of the women of this organization. From my side, the mission was to portray these women in their environment, plus shoot some other more “commercial” and “editorial” type of photographs for their website and all kinds of publications that they may have in the near future.

Let me tell you the biggest challenge in this assignment. First of all, after trying to go to Baghdad to photograph these women in their own houses, we were told by the locals that it was not a good idea, and that it could compromise their own safety. So, because the subject is what matters, and their lives comes first, we decided, along with the guys from Prosperity Candle, to send them to a safer place where we could shoot and record their stories. You may be wondering, how can we take environmental photographs, without their real environment? Well, we did our best to reproduce their lives, but in another part of Iraq. My opinion? I don’t know if I would do this again. You see, for someone who loves documenting realities, it’s difficult trying to mimic them. Then again, it was that or nothing, letting down this impressive initiative, without a voice and images to be represented on the Internet.

Now about the stories…

I want to start by telling you the story of Waffa. She is a widow that has a candle business and also has a small shop that is the main income for her household. She has four children, and she has become the father and mother for them. In 2007 a mortar felt on her house, killing her husband and injuring two of her children. Every day she wakes up very early to prepare the wax for the candles, plus take care of the groceries that she will try to sell in her shop. She told us, among other things, that she had been in love with her husband; that theirs wasn’t an arranged marriage as normally would be in this culture, but that they decided to be together. She told us that she had to clean the wounds of her kids while she maintained their shop all by her self, and how doctors admired how well she did this…

I could go on and on with her narratives, but I’m going to let the coming materials, her video, explain more…

One thing that she told me, and it stroked me the most was,

“I don’t like it when the people treat me like a hero. I don’t like it when people feel pity for my story and me. I want to show the world that I’m still happy, that I enjoy my life with my kids, that the best way of remembering my husband is by being grateful…”

She asked me to not portray her as sad, because she wasn’t, even though she would cry at memories of her stories, or reading love letters from her husband. She still has joy in her heart for life. What a great life lesson right here, isn’t it?

Before I sign off, I want to encourage you to take steps to support this project and buy a candle. Do it this week! Give one to your wife or husband; do as Waffa would do to her beloved husband. Each candle sold is bringing a little bit of hope to these women, but especially to Waffa. She is still happy because, among other things, she still believes in love. Buy a candle and give her confirmation of that!

She said:

“In each of the candles that I make, part of my story goes there”…

(Buy that candle and keep her in mind. People like you and I are needed.)

Now, let me show you some of the photographs that are the result of this two-day-project.

For more photographs on this assignment go to: http://www.hebervega.com/2010/06/23/photographs-from-prosperity-candle-slideshow/

First Report: USAID University of Sulaimaniyah faculty-teaching Project

[May 1, 2010]

As you can read in our Help-4 page, as Humanitarian worker, I’m part of a wide variety of developmental programs. But also, as a photographer, I’m working on documenting these programs through photography. Today I want to share an Update for our English Project at the local University.

Written by DeeDee Baumgarner, English Program Director.

The first month of the USAID University of Sulaimaniyah faculty-teaching project has come and gone, with many great things happening!

Our four American professors arrived in Sulaimaniyah and settled into housing, filled to the brim with newfound Kurdish cultural information. They set up 16 classes within the colleges of Science, Medicine, Dentistry, Veterinary Science, Law, Political Science, Engineering, Physical Education, Humanities, Agriculture, Pharmacy, Administration, Information Technology, and Economics.

All of our “students” are Assistant lecturers, Lecturers, Assistant demonstrators, and Demonstrators who are employed by the University of Sulaimaniyah. A series of pre-tests was given to each class, consisting of Paper-based TOEFL examinations in the areas of Listening, Structure, Reading, and a writing prompt. All of the scores are recorded on Excel spreadsheets and the information will be used for pre and post data, as well as to guide curriculum. 330 students have been tested in the first phase of the program. We expected 400, but because of the time of year we began the course (we are at the end of a term, heading into final examinations) we had some minor scheduling difficulties. We don’t foresee any problems scheduling phase two, as we’ll be able to work with the University schedulers, not around them.

We are able to use two American course textbooks, published by McGraw-Hill and Barron’s that are readily available for the students here at an affordable price. We have weekly teacher meetings to conduct an After Action Review of the previous week and to plan for the next one. We have common goals and objectives for each week, and some common activities, but each American professor plans their own lesson, depending on individual teaching styles.

We all have very positive feelings about this program after the first month. The University of Sulaimaniyah professors who are being taught are not only learning English, but are being exposed to proven methods of student engagement that will also work for them within their own classes. They are very excited about this, and we only foresee greater things for the next seven months!

More pictures will be available soon.

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April 14, 2010 by heber vega

Black and White Confessions

[April 14, 2010]

Who Am I? I know that you have been wondering about who am I… yeah, I’ve been wondering the same for a while believe me.

Today, I’m going to use the black & white photographs that I’m working on as an excuse to talk a little bit about my photography. First off, I’m not a full time photographer. But I’m definitely in love with photography, that’s all!

As I’ve said in a couple of places in this blog, I’m a humanitarian worker, but also a photographer, and even though I’d love to work exclusively as a photographer, I’d still prefer to serve people in need. You see, photography is my passion, but to love others is more than that; it’s a responsibility that I have chosen to carry out. Maybe one day I will explain why.

I bought my first DSLR in 2006, so I don’t have many years of “running around with a Brownie around my neck,” although photography has been a passion cultivated over the years… my work in Iraq forced me to get more serious about what I love. When you live in a place where you question much of everything in your life, when you don’t know if you will see the next day, then you don’t want to lose another day. Life is short, it certainly is, and I have decided to not miss another day/month/year NOT doing what I believe God has given me as a gift. Do you believe in purpose? I do! I’m totally convinced that I have purpose in what I do.

Let’s talk about photography… I love colors, love the way that God has chosen colors for everything in this world, including human beings and cultures. But, there’s something about black & white photography that draws my attention. I don’t know what it is yet, but I’m trying to discover it by applying it to my photographs. Last weekend I shot for two days in a very casual way, not trying to accomplish anything more than have a great time with my camera and the people that surround me in Iraq.

I don’t know if I’m going to keep using black & white for expressing myself, although sometimes I have thought about exclude colors, (except when I have an assignment, so don’t stop hiring me! ) but I’m kind of afraid of doing that. There’s an artistic part of me that just want to stick to monochrome. We’ll see…

For now I want to share some of my shots from last weekend.

The first set is the shepherd. I found this man after seeking a subject. For at least 10 minutes, I was driving and trying to find something unique to shoot (you see, I live outside the city, close to the mountains). When I was giving up I found him, right there as you see him.

In this set I shot some kids from the same area as the shepherd. They were happily playing in a semi-abandoned soccer field.

I also found an old graveyard, probably not use for a while. It’s more difficult for me to try to shoot landscapes than people, so here is my attempt.

The last set is of a friend that I met recently. His mane is Mama Ali, at least that’s what people call him. He invited my family to drink tea at his house. What started out as a simple one-hour visit resulted in a full day of enjoyment… you’ve GOT to see the hospitality of the Iraqis. It is just amazing!

Well, I hope you have enjoy my “confessions in monochrome…”

Thank you so much!

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March 4, 2010 by heber vega

Back to School

[March 4, 2010] I’m glad to confirm that for the next 8 months I’ll be shooting a very neat project at the local university in Sulaimaniyah, Iraq. This project is funded by USAID and is carried out by an international NGO. For you to understand how important this project is to local education, I’ll have to tell you a little bit about the Kurdish people and their background here in Iraq.
The Kurds have been living in this area for thousands of years, but until this day, they have never had their own country or nation, at least as we understand that word. During the early 1900’s, the British army dominated the Middle East. Once the Brits decided to leave the area, they also made the decision to divide it into the countries that we know as Iraq, Turkey, Iran and Syria. The bad thing was, the British decided the borders without taking the Kurds into account. The result? The 40-million-or-so Kurds ended up as the world’s largest people group without their own country. This decision had far-reaching side effects, like many different conflicts between the Kurds and these 4 new countries during the last 50-60 years. This decision also resulted in conflicts that caused persecution to the Kurds, their culture, and their language.
In 2003, when I got here, it was impossible to bring books written in Kurdish language into Iraq. They couldn’t pass through the immigration control of the neighboring countries. This lack of materials, plus all sorts of limitations within Iraq, made it impossible to teach in Kurdish at the local universities. Kurds were forced to adopt other languages if they wanted to grow as professionals. Today, most of the major career classes are taught in either English or Arabic at the local universities.
The problem, you see, is that neither the professors nor the students have an adequate level of English so as to take advantage of the materials and books that they have, because they’re all written in English.
Last year, for first time, the NGO that I work for was able to send some American teachers to help with English acquisition for the first year students at Sulaimaniyah University. The intention behind this project was to improve students’ English so that materials and books wouldn’t be such an obstacle in preparing for their careers.
For 6 months, these teachers taught 1000 students, but were also able to train some of the faculty and professors in two two-week programs. This was very helpful to them, but there was just not enough time to show significant results. Now, these American teachers will be teaching exclusively to the professors for the next 8 months. USAID believes that improving the English of the professors will also help to improve the education for the entire local university, and that’s our hope as well.
I will leave you with a couple of shots from last year’s program, and I will be posting new ones once the project starts.

"English Project at University of Sulaimaniyah"

"Training the professors in English language"

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February 23, 2010 by heber vega

Personal Assignment

[March 3, 2010] As you can read here, the reason why I shoot humanitarian photography, why I picked it instead of, lets say, landscape or weddings, is because I’m a humanitarian worker myself. This is what I do when I’m not shooting. This is what I have been doing for the past 6 years in Iraq.
Before coming to this country, I knew that my vocation was to help others. It’s weird to talk about, but back in the days when I was a teenager, I remember most of the kids, if not all of them, talking about their future vocations, what they wanted to do for the rest of their lives. I was always the weirdo for not knowing the answer, for not having a plan.
My choice of vocation was triggered late in the game, only after I started working on social programs back in Chile and Peru. At that moment, after my very first trip to Peru, I remember talking to myself and realizing that helping others, working with people in need, was exactly what I wanted to do!
After a couple of years of just working, I found a spot in my local government. I was a part of a committee making decisions on how to spend the available funds for youth programs in the community. Then, in 2003, the same year that I got married, we were invited to join an International NGO working in Iraq. When I received that invitation, I was amazed at such a big opportunity. There was a war going on there, and did I mention that I had just gotten married? Well, at that point, my whole life was an adventure anyway, so why not?
Now let me talk about the most important point in this post: everything that I know about NGOs and humanitarian work, I learned here in Iraq. I have been involved in different projects during the years, but of all of them, there’s one that I still keep working on and shooting for, a project that stole my heart. We used to call it the Women Center. Originally meant for only women, now the Family Center offers a variety of programs oriented at serving the whole family, but still emphasizing the Iraqi women. We offer Sewing + Tailoring classes, computer classes, English classes, Handicraft classes and other programs. There is free dental assistance for the families who attend our center. We even built a small park, the only green area for 10k people, where the families can come and enjoy a picnic and relax. Our building is very different than anything that most of you have ever seen, because we built it out straw bales and clay!

This is my personal assignment, because it’s special. I have “sweat equity” invested in this place! Even though it’s work, I feel that it’s more like working at home.
In future posts I’ll be covering the programs and people around this center. We’ll discover stories among them, but today I’ll just show you a couple of shots.

I’m a humanitarian photographer because I’m a humanitarian worker first!

"Sewing + Tailoring classes at the Family Center"

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February 18, 2010 by heber vega

PLC Banquet

[February 18, 2010] In this post I introduce you to the work of the Preemptive Love Coalition, and Jeremy Courtney as well. As I said before, I’m now shooting for this wonderful organization whenever our schedules match up. In my first week with them I got to shoot in Kalatze, following up on some of their children, but I also got to cover a very important event for them, the PLC Alumni Banquet. This banquet was just more proof that PLC is truly a peacemaking initiative. In short, let me explain why…
For more than a decade, the Kurds were having problems with the official Turkish government. Today that situation is changing, with much better relationships on both sides. However, as you can guess, people on this side of the border are still somewhat skeptical about that change. There are still hurtful memories, but now PLC is able to send Iraqi Kurdish children to have heart surgeries in one of the best hospitals in Turkey, the Anadolu Medical Center in Istanbul. There, they have some very professional Turkish doctors treating Kurdish children with no problem at all. More than that, these doctors are helping out with every matter, both large and small, as best they can.
At the alumni banquet, for the first time, PLC had these doctors come all the way here, to Northern Iraq, to be with the Kurdish families; the families of the children that are being helped. This event turned out to be a huge success, a peacemaking event, destroying old barriers and walls. The doctors enjoyed the company of the families, while the families felt honored to cook for their esteemed guests. In short, everything worked really well. Even for myself, I’d have to say it worked well! I got some good shots, after all. I have to confess that I was afraid of an “event”, because it’s not the same as shooting a story, or a portrait. An event like this one can be wild, where you need to be aware of everything, where you don’t want to miss a gesture, an action, the moment, or just something key for the shoot. The lighting is wild and crazy; with dozens of people moving around you, really fast, not waiting for you to shoot them. Anyway, this time everything worked out.
I want to leave you with some photos that I shot that day. I hope that you have learned a little bit more about this organization and its amazing work. From my side, I’m eagerly awaiting my next chance to shoot for PLC.

PS. Jeremy has promised to upload more photos of this banquet in his blog. As soon as that happens, I’ll add a link here.

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February 13, 2010 by heber vega

Preemptive Love?

[February 13, 2010] In my home country, Chile, I had the opportunity to collaborate in a couple of social programs. Most of them were geared towards youth, so it wasn’t until I got to Iraq that I started to understand the entire world surrounding humanitarian organizations and NGOs. In the past 7 years I’ve seen a myriad of organizations amble through Iraq, some of them with good intentions but no expertise, some of them with a lot of money but poor implementation of their programs, others yet looking for a way to make money; but I have also found organizations doing a good job, honoring the humanitarian field. With those organizations, I also have learned that their good results, most of the time, are due to a really smart, really committed person.
A couple of years ago I had the honor of meeting Jeremy Courtney, one of these exceptional people. He is a talented musician, videographer, relief worker, good father and better friend. After just one year of being here, Jeremy realized and identified one of the most common health problems among children in Iraq, heart disease. In the beginning, he worked in conjunction with the organization that I work for, getting these children out of Iraq for heart surgeries. In Iraq we don’t have the surgical infrastructure for those kinds of surgeries.
Later Jeremy saw the opportunity to expand this initiative way beyond anybody’s imagination. He created his own organization, selling the typical Kurdish shoes to people back in America, as a way of raising funds. Today that organization has grown exponentially and it doesn’t belong just to Jeremy anymore, but to several dozens of contributors from all around the world. What was once called, “Buy Shoes Save Lives,” is now known as the “Preemptive Love Coalition;” A mature and vision-driven organization. PLC, as we call it here in Iraq, is now able to send dozens of Iraqi children to Turkey every year for heart surgeries. Who said that a simple person couldn’t change the world?

Today I’m talking about this organization because I am blessed to be able to shoot for PLC whenever our schedules match up. This is just the first post of several more that I hope I can use to share about my work for PLC. In this, the first post, I wanted to show the first photo shoot that I did for PLC this month.

After Jeremy talked to me about shooting photos for PLC, he invited me to spend a day in Kaladze, a small Kurdish town in northern Iraq. He wanted me to shoot photos of some of the children that PLC has been working with. The following shots belongs to Shwan and his family, a 10-year-old boy that received a heart surgery last year. Now, thanks to that surgery, he is able to have a better and more normal life.

PLC Staff talking to Shwan’s dad about his recovery and new life.

The moment in which PLC staff has asked Shwan about things he couldn’t do before surgery, but he can do now.

A Portrait of Shwan…

Our English classes at the Center seem to be very popular, with 6 of them going on right now! There are 138 students currently enrolled in the two-month program. Students receive two hours of instruction a week and then have listening, reading, and writing activities to do at home.

One of our most popular classes still continues, with Henry (kak Bakhtyar) in charge. He teaches mostly women and a few teens the art of making beautiful things for the home.

You can follow our work at: www.hebervega.com/help-4

Now about the stories…

I could go on and on with her narratives, but I’m going to let the coming materials, her video, explain more…

One thing that she told me, and it stroked me the most was,

“I don’t like it when the people treat me like a hero. I don’t like it when people feel pity for my story and me. I want to show the world that I’m still happy, that I enjoy my life with my kids, that the best way of remembering my husband is by being grateful…”

She asked me to not portray her as sad, because she wasn’t, even though she would cry at memories of her stories, or reading love letters from her husband. She still has joy in her heart for life. What a great life lesson right here, isn’t it?

She said:

“In each of the candles that I make, part of my story goes there”…

(Buy that candle and keep her in mind. People like you and I are needed.)

Now, let me show you some of the photographs that are the result of this two-day-project.

You can follow our work at:
www.hebervega.com/help-4