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Lewis Hine Fellowship

Powerful information can bring powerful change. When Lewis Hine traveled early twentieth century sweatshops with a camera, his photographs became a major tool in the fight to pass child labor laws.

Today, at Duke University’s Center for Documentary Studies, young people called Lewis Hine Fellows are trained to make documentary studies in his spirit.  The Fellows capture the stories of children and parents who are deeply affected by poverty. They use a camera as Lewis Hine did, but they also employ podcasts and oral histories. The Fellows document the work of tenacious community problem solvers.

Thanks to an anonymous TPI client, this international program came to Boston in 2007. Each year, TPI manages a competitive process in which community-based organizations apply to host a fellow and two to three organizations are selected, based upon their capacity and vision of how they might use the skills of a Hine Fellow. 

The pilot fellows spent a year at Julie's Family Learning Program in South Boston and Project Hope in Dorchester.  Other organizations that have hosted Hine Fellows include grassroots youth leadership organizations: ROCA in Chelsea, the Hyde Square Task Force in Jamaica Plain and Project Hip Hop in Roxbury; community development corporations: the Jamaica Plain Neighborhood Development Corporation and IBA (Inquilinos Boricuas en Accion) in Boston’s South End; and an established settlement house, United South End Settlements.  For the 2009-10 year, Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Center and CollegeBound Dorchester have been chosen to host fellows.

The Hine Fellows Program is having a profound impact on a number of levels. It is providing needed resources to the organizations with which the Fellows are placed and thus furthering their work.  This program is engaging skilled young people with a commitment to social justice in the core work of community-based organizations.  Most significantly, it is helping low income women and young people find their voices and take the first steps in the process of transformation.  In the words of Sister Margaret Leonard, Director of Project Hope, “They change themselves and their families. They transform their understanding of their world and begin to see themselves as agents of social change, in their kids’ schools and in their neighborhoods, and in their larger community.”

The Hine Fellows Program is an example of an initiative that can have a major impact with a relatively minor philanthropic investment.  The donor is paying for stipends for the Fellows as well as the costs of managing the program.  TPI’s role is to serve as liaison with the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University, home of the Hine Fellows, and to identify the best sites for placement of the Fellows.  This model of engaging skilled young people with a commitment to social justice in the core work of community-based organizations is one that could be expanded and adapted to other communities.