In Japan, Restoring Photos For Tsunami Victims

by Frank Langfitt

Each week, tsunami survivors gather at temporary housing centers in the city of Yamada along Japan’s northeast coast. They sing songs to cheer themselves up and comb through salvaged photos.

One morning, Miyoko Fukushi finds an old picture from the opening day of her daughter’s elementary school. It’s a formal shot of the students’ mothers, wearing kimonos with their hands in their laps. Fukushi, 77, points to a younger version of herself.

“I was chubbier when I was young,” she says with a laugh.

Then she points to other women in the picture, who lost their lives in the deluge.

“Kayo Suzuki. She was washed away as she ran from the tsunami,” Fukushi recalls. “This is Kayoko Kon. I heard she went back home to get her belongings.”

Last March’s tsunami devastated the coast here. If people didn’t lose their lives, they lost practically everything else — except, it turns out, many of their photos. Survivors found countless pictures strewn amid the mud and wreckage, many badly damaged by water.

Over the past several months, All Hands Volunteers, a Massachusetts-based, nonprofit, has done everything from repairing homes to cleaning drainage ditches along the coast. The organization has also hand-cleaned more than 55,000 photos. In some cases, professionals from around the globe have even restored images digitally.

Fukushi’s photograph needs work. Specks of dirt are embedded in the surface, and saltwater has washed away some of the figures.

“It’s a shame that damage has gone up so far on this lady, but most of her face is there,” says Becci Manson, a volunteer with All Hands, as she examines figures in the picture.

Ordinarily, Manson works in New York retouching images for magazines like GQ and catalogs for Barneys. When she saw all of the damaged photos here, she saw another way to help.

Manson has traveled more than an hour up the coast today to pick up and return photos. She takes Fukushi’s picture, scans it onto her laptop and uploads the image to a server. Then, she turns to scores of volunteers — from Sydney to Spain — to see who’s available to restore it.

“I’ll send an email out to all the retouchers and say, ‘ I’ve got loads more images for you,’ ” says Manson, who travels from town to town with a portable scanner. “Those who write back and say they want a new one, I’ll start sending the images.”

Scores of photo retouchers have pitched in to help. In all, they have fixed more than 220 photos for nearly 60 families, Manson says.

One of the volunteers is Bob Whitmore. Whitmore used to work with Manson in New York and learned about the photo rescue project on Facebook. He has already restored two pictures and is working on a third from his home in Metuchen, N.J.

Sometimes, Whitmore has to restore people’s bodies, or backdrops have been blotted out by water. He uses Photoshop to restore a piece of clothing or reconstruct a room.

“Using the laws of perspective, if you’ve got a wall coming up and a ceiling coming over, you can kind of figure out where they should meet,” he says in a Skype interview.

Professionally, Whitmore spends most of his time making a glamorous world look even more so in fashion magazines, but he has always loved restoring people’s old pictures.

“It’s the most satisfying work I think I’ve ever done,” says Whitmore. “Taking old photos and breathing some life into them. Putting the color back in that was faded, or fixing spots that have been damaged. People just light up when they see something come back that they thought was gone.”

Cho Kikuchi certainly did. She lost all of the photos in her house to the tsunami, but a few survived in a Buddhist temple, including one of her late father and another of her late husband.

They were worn and scratched by the elements. Manson retouched the photos herself, good as new.

“I didn’t expect this would [be] so beautiful,” says Kikuchi, 75, admiring the restored photos while sitting in a temporary home the government has provided. Every time she sees Manson — who is about half her age — Kikuchi invites her in for tea and snacks.

Kikuchi has placed the restored prints in a small, wooden shrine in her tiny home where she honors her loved ones.

“In the morning, I give them water and tea with ice,” she says. “Then, I pray for them to please watch over me.”

Manson says responses like this make the work worthwhile.

She says it’s also gratifying for another reason: Photo retouchers are often criticized for distorting reality in fashion magazines.

“There’s always someone who’s got something to say about how thin someone is made or how flawless someone’s skin is and the effect it has on young women,” says Manson. “So when I set up the project, it was nice to think we could actually do something to help someone.”

There’s more to do. In Yamada alone, thousands of recovered photos are waiting to be reclaimed by their ow

NPR / All Things Considered / Published: August 19, 2011

 

i have the honor of being a part of this project. what an incredible gift to give. you can listen to the story on npr here.

charity: water turns five

charity: water started five years ago with a simple idea: we’d share our story with the world, ask others to join us, and use 100% of the money we raised to fund clean water for people in need. With your help, we’ve had explosive growth. Our partners in the field are working at capacity to implement our projects. The only way to keep fighting the water crisis at this rate is to buy the equipment our partners need to get the job done faster.

Scott Harrison is such a good man. Clean water should be available for all. This is possible.

Celebrating Women Around the World

It’s International Women’s Day! So we’re taking a moment to look back at all the incredible women we met last year while in the field. Some have clean water, others are still walking hours to the nearest source. Many are mothers, balancing parenting with housework, jobs or work in the community as hygiene educators and well caretakers. Some run their own businesses or entire clinics and schools.

All are beautiful.

photos: Esther Havens, Mo Scarpelli, Scott Harrison

Celebrate women today! Take a look back at some of our latest stories from the field about powerful women:

– Elodi from Central African Republic: She lost a child to waterborne illness. But the Live Drill would change the future for her other kids.
– Rose from Kenya: Now that she has clean water, she’s getting her grad degree.
– Keisha from Haiti: She fled to an island after the earthquake — with no water, but lots of hope.
– Helen from Uganda: “Now, I am beautiful.” 

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charity: water is a non-profit organization bringing clean and safe drinking water to people in developing nations. 100% of public donations directly fund water projects. Learn more or donate.

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The Clock Is Ticking

Since we’ve been on the subject of revisiting: The Girl Effect.
Yes, it’s still the most important thing you can do.

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Earthquake in Haiti

Help Needed: Haiti hit with massive quake.

Haiti was hit yesterday by what could be considered the worst natural disaster for the region in the last 200 years.

An earthquake with an estimated magnitude of 7.0, shocked the country just before 5 p.m. on Tuesday, collapsing buildings and cutting water and electricity services in Port-au-Prince and surrounding areas. Aftershocks of 4.5 magnitude or higher continued through the night and early Wednesday, thwarting immediate aid efforts for an estimated 3 million affected by the quake. Thousands are expected dead or injured and many more will be displaced with their homes reduced to rubble.

charity: water’s two local partners, Partners in Health and Concern Worldwide, are reacting to the disaster swiftly and comprehensively.*
We need your support. In the interest of immediate relief, we’re asking that donations be made straight to our partners.

To donate to Partners in Health’s efforts, click here.
To donate to Concern Worldwide’s efforts, click here.

Already one of the poorest and densely-populated countries in the Western Hemisphere, Haiti has struggled to overcome the effects of a slew of rough storms in 2008 before this week’s disaster. More than 4 million people (42% of the population) already lack access to safe drinking water. Disasters undercut development efforts tremendously.

*charity: water started working with PIH in 2007 and has since funded six freshwater projects with the organization to bring safe water to more than 25,000 people in rural Haiti (learn more here). Last year, we started partnering with Concern Worldwide in Haiti by funding eight spring protection systems, which will provide clean water for at least 6,000 people, once completed.

namaste

travel hiatus.  my favorite kind.

we’re in nepal and india for the next four months, volunteering for VCD Nepal, Pencils of Promise, shooting a lot, playing a lot, and testing out olfactory fatigue.

india has gotten more expensive, but really, the dollar is just not what it used to be.  not even since last spring.  good thing we’re in nepal now, where spending twelve dollars tonight seemed like an extravaganza.  great meals for a dollar or two.  hotels for less than ten a night.  had some delicious masala tea at the kathmandu guest house.  saw a breathtaking view of the himalayas on the flight in (travel tip#1: sit on the left side of the plane flying eastward, right westward).

i’m looking forward to hanging out in the mountains, rolling around a bit in greens and blues, shooting what makes me happiest, being encompassed by a new culture, and potentially learning to not gag while eating lentils every meal.

more to come.

updates here and from two points of view at sojourner cafe.

The Girl Effect

Microfinancing changes lives. For the women involved, their parents, their daughters, sons, their towns. They create governments, strive for freedom, build houses, battle healthcare, encourage education, and instill hope. It happens for so little.

Join Kiva (it’s just a loan). Read Banker to the Poor, Three Cups of Tea, Infidel. It’s so easy. Join the Women’s Crusade. Invest in The Girl Effect.

Saving a Kashmiri Village After Remaking His Life

by Adam B. Ellick

CHIKAR, Pakistan — The lone hospital in this Kashmiri mountain town was on the eve of hosting one of the year’s biggest social gatherings, a health fair for several hundred villagers, and Todd Shea was not happy.

The hospital’s founder, Mr. Shea, an American who resembles a football coach more than a health worker, was outraged because one of the employees had failed to purchase enough hygiene kits — freebies the villagers had come to expect at the fair.

“This is a problem, and there is a solution,” Mr. Shea, strident but good-natured, yelled to a staffer on the phone from the field. “Let’s see how good you are. I know there are kits lurking in the walls. I guarantee you that if I come there, I will find them. You know me!”

Seven hours later, at midnight, the employee returned from a nearby city with a sheepish smile and 100 kits he had managed to round up. Mr. Shea hugged him, “I believe in you,” he said.

If Mr. Shea, 42, had a résumé, it would by his own admission reveal far more experience as a cocaine addict than as a medical professional. But with his take-charge demeanor, he has transformed primary health care here in this mountain town in Kashmir, where government services are mostly invisible.

“Others are more qualified, but I’m the one who’s here,” he said.

Most recently, he has focused on the millions of people who have been uprooted by the army’s campaign against the Taliban, in the northwest.

But it is here that Mr. Shea spends his time and learned years ago that, as far as health care is concerned, every day is a crisis for Pakistanis.

He arrived as a volunteer rescue worker immediately after the 2005 earthquake that killed 80,000 Pakistanis. Overwhelmed by the community’s long-term needs Mr. Shea never left, and in 2006 he set up a nonprofit charity hospital called Comprehensive Disaster Relief Services, or C.D.R.S.

Humanitarian aid flooded the region in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake, but the tide of aid and government support ebbed within months, leaving 25,000 wounded residents without doctors, medical supplies and an actual health outpost. That is, life returned to normal.

In Pakistan, less than one percent of the national budget is devoted to the health of its citizens, and the nation’s health care crisis is especially acute in remote communities. “It’s frustrating and sad that’s the way it is,” Mr. Shea said. “But if I screamed from the mountaintop, it wouldn’t change a thing.”

So he does what he can. His hospital, with 38 employees and nearly $200,000 in financing from Americans and Unicef, highlights not only the needs of Pakistan’s rural health system but also a glaring vulnerability for a government trying to brand itself an alternative to the Taliban.

“The Taliban terrorize people, but they put forth logical arguments about the state’s failures,” said Shandana Khan, the chief operating officer of the Rural Support Program Network.

“It’s very common to see primary health care facilities without doctors, or medicines,” she added. “Doctors don’t want to be posted there. Or they’ll sign up and get paid, but sit in cities and no one monitors them.”

Chikar is only 85 miles from the capital, Islamabad, but it takes six hours up a switchback road to reach the hospital. Here, the government provides only 10 percent of the community’s medicine needs. C.D.R.S. picks up the rest.

Last year Mr. Shea recruited a doctor by doubling his government salary and offering him the only private room in the 20-room hospital, which he rents for $250 a month. Mr. Shea himself sleeps on a mattress in a room he shares with staff members.

“The things you see here are only because of C.D.R.S.,” said the doctor, Rizwan Shabir, 27, who had come from a practice in Muzaffarabad, a city of 300,000. “Frankly, without Todd, there would be no proper medicine, and patients would be dead.”

Still, C.D.R.S. is more makeshift than miracle. On a recent morning, Dr. Shabir treated 140 patients in five hours. Without blood-testing laboratories, he diagnoses common illnesses like hepatitis and tuberculosis through clinical evaluations.

Outside of Chikar, C.D.R.S. supplements 10 other regional government health outposts by paying salaries and purchasing medicines. Over all, it treats about 100,000 patients annually, and 70 percent are women and children.

With the global economic crisis, Mr. Shea says he fears that his group’s $200,000 annual budget may be difficult to raise for 2010. So he has proposed a community insurance program that would require a contribution of 31 cents per person per month, which would net $20,000 a month. He estimates that 65 percent of the town can afford it, and he hopes the government and private donors will pick up the rest.

Mr. Shea is an unlikely person to reform Chikar’s decades of medical neglect. When he was 12, his mother died of a Valium overdose. By 18, he was addicted to crack cocaine.

In 1992, he moved from his native Maryland to Nashville to pursue a music career, he said, and spent the next decade playing in bars and restaurants around the country. At one point, he was forced to sell his own blood plasma for $40 a week to pay the bills.

He moved to New York City in 1998, and had a gig booked at CBGB, the famed music club, on Sept. 12, 2001. As he watched the World Trade Center burn and fall, he said, he promptly emptied his band van and used it over the next week to ferry meals to firefighters at Ground Zero.

He soon became addicted to rescue efforts, and volunteered in Sri Lanka after the 2004 tsunami. It was his first time overseas. After Hurricane Katrina, he said, he volunteered with another rescue organization. Then the earthquake hit Pakistan, and he left for a country he knew nothing about.

Once in Chikar, he met a local M.B.A. student, Afzel Makhdoom, who had just dragged his aunt out from under the rubble of his home. As soon as he could scrape together the money, Mr. Shea hired him.

“I had never met an American before,” said Mr. Makhdoom, now 24. “My first impression was: They just want to kill Muslims; it’s an invasion, and they’ll never go back home. But now we want to keep this American here.”

[video: The Improbable American]

The New York Times / Chikar Journal / Published: June 25, 2009

Earth Hour

It’s as simple as a flick of the switch.

What began as a campaign to get Sydneysiders to turn their lights off, has grown to become one of the world’s biggest climate change initiatives. In 2009, at 8.30pm on March 28, people around the world will turn their lights off for one hour – Earth Hour. We’re aiming to reach one billion people, more than 1000 cities, all joining together in a global effort to show that its possible to take action on global warming.

Earth Hour started in 2007 in Sydney, Australia with 2.2 million homes and businesses turning their lights off for one hour. Only a year later and this event had become a global sustainability movement with up to 50 million people across 35 countries participating. Global landmarks such as the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, Rome’s Colosseum and the Coca Cola billboard in Times Square, all stood in darkness, as symbols of hope for a cause that grows more urgent by the hour.

Earth Hour 2009 is a global call to action to every individual, every business and every community. A call to stand up, to take responsibility and to get involved in working towards a sustainable future. Iconic buildings and landmarks from Europe to The Americas will stand in darkness. People across the world will turn off their lights and join together in creating the vital conversation about the future of our precious planet.

Over 64 countries and territories are participating in Earth Hour 2009. This number grows every day as people realise how such a simple act, can have such a profound result in affecting change.

Earth Hour is a message of hope and a message of action. Join us for Earth Hour 2009, turn off your lights at 8.30pm Saturday 28 March and sign-up here to be counted.

See the difference you can make.

Environmental Film Festival

What are you doing this month?

Case Against Cruelty

Animal victims of abuse cannot speak for themselves—so concerned citizens and our legal system must speak up for them. That’s why the Animal Legal Defense Fund has created National Justice for Animals Week—an annual event that will be dedicated to raising public awareness nationwide about how to report animal abuse—and how to work within your community to create stronger laws and assure tough enforcement.

Martin Luther King Jr.

Martin Luther King Jr. has now been dead longer than he lived. But what an extraordinary life it was.

At 33, he was pressing the case of civil rights with President John Kennedy. At 34, he galvanized the nation with his “I Have a Dream” speech. At 35, he won the Nobel Peace Prize. At 39, he was assassinated, but he left a legacy of hope and inspiration that continues today.

This website, first created by The Seattle Times in 1996, contains the story of a remarkable man, images of a tumultuous time, and perspectives of politicians, academics, students and the many, ordinary citizens whose lives he touched.

Celebrate Martin Luther King Day as a day of service in honor of a man who dedicated his life to it.

Shhhhh

StoryCorps’ National Day of Listening. This holiday season, ask the people around you about their lives — it could be your grandmother, a teacher, or someone from the neighborhood. By listening to their stories, you will be telling them that they matter and they won’t ever be forgotten. It may be the most meaningful time you spend this year.
Learn. Participate. Listen. Share.

Building a Better World

There are so many things we can do. You don’t have to design for change.
You can just vote for it.

Question Everything

Why is it socially acceptable to hoard wealth while so many go without basic needs?

Is egoism the reason for human failure?

Is it possible addiction is not really about drugs, that addiction is really about relationships that human beings form with one another?

What is freedom? Is it relative to where you are in the world?

Are women better human beings than men?

Why do we still believe more in nationality than humanity?

The Decision is Yours

Join American Express in their Members Project. Learn about some amazing organizations and vote for one of five projects to receive funds of $1.5 million. International Medical Corps sends medical staff around the world to provide relief and developmental programs. Kiva provides person-to-person microlending to change individual lives and as the money gets repaid, you decide where it should go next.

Your ideas. Your decision. Their money. The easiest way to make a difference.