HYPOTHESES

STUDENTS PARTICIPANT-RESEARCHERS WILL:

1) see themselves as researchers with power to investigate their own communities and concerns;

2) increase commitments to social justice around women’s health

3) increase their critical visual literacy and capacity to shape representations of women’s lives.

PARTICIPATORY ACTION RESEARCH (PAR)

PAR involves participant-researchers in critical reflection on every aspect of the research process, from articulating hypotheses, to formulating questions, to designing, implementing and analyzing a study (Cahill, 2007; Torres, Fine, Stoudt, and Fox, 2012; Wang, 1999))..

PHOTOVOICEPhotovoice has developed as a form of PAR methodology particularly well-suited to work with communities who have low-literacy or diverse languages.

In telling the individual stories behind their photos, the women also create what Lykes (2001) has called “a collective story” about poverty and violence, that can be owned by participants and re- told to their own and other communities to provoke critical dialogue and contribute to responsive actions.

WHAP!WORKSHOPS

WHAP! WORKSHOPS

● deep personal disclosure – “consciousness raising”

● photography/visual literacy

● “causes of the causes”

FROM THE WHAP! STATEMENT

WHAP! is a group of nine women students from the Hostos Community Health and Media Design programs.We have spent the semester doing Participatory Action Research (PAR) to investigate health issues of women at Hostos. This “Photovoice”exhibition presents what we learned through focus groups, interviews, journals, and photographs we took of ourselves and our communities. We hope our exhibit helps create change by stimulating conversation about women’s health needs.

EXHIBIT

CHALLENGES

SUCCESSES

FUTURE RECOMMENDATIONS

THANK YOU!