Empowering women through photography: Her Lens, Her Story

Lensational provides marginalised women in developing countries with photography training and digital skills and shares their unheard stories with a global audience. Through photography, they have a voice, a base of strength and a source of income.

1 out of 6 women in the world still cannot read and write; and women make up 2/3 of the world’s illiterate population. In today’s knowledge economy, illiterate populations are at higher risk of being left behind.There is a vast digital gender gap: 200 million fewer than men own mobile phones; due to harmful social norms that limit women’s use of and access to technology. Our solution targets illiterate populations by focusing on a form of technology – photography which transcends illiteracy, evolves social norms and links women to global economic opportunities. 

Lensational aims to empower marginalised women through photography, so that women have a voice, a base of strength and a source of income. Our methodology has been internationally recognised, including being chosen as Winner of Hivos’ Social Innovation Award in 2015, presenting at a psychologists’ conference in Perugia, Italy, and publishing a research paper via the Graduate Institute, Geneva. We also advocate for women’s rights globally - our women’s stories have been shared with over 12,000 followers on our social media channels, global media outlets including The Guardian, Huffington Post, Mashable, and over 6,000 visitors to our exhibitions globally.    

Lensational works with marginalised women and girls in developing countries. The impact of our solution on the women is twofold: 1) the development of the women as confident, aspirational individuals able to understand, tell and pursue their own narratives; 2) technical training and their ability to learn a new skill that can both bring them enjoyment and economic opportunity. The solution, in its current form of a 8-hour in-person training, has already reached 600 women through volunteer trainers and local partners in 15 countries. We aim to scale the training through developing a mobile app linked to a digital platform.

Track downloads in the app store - 10,000 women use our app by 2018.

Pre- and post-questionnaire on app - Increase in aspirations and confidence level

Track photography sales and revenue shared with women - Increase in income earned per woman

Lensational pioneers an approach of using photography to empower marginalised women, as photography is a universal language that transcends literacy and mobility barriers. Our training has helped women overcome their self-limiting bias through improving aspirations, creating strong support networks and role models. “If you can’t see it, you can’t be it.” The empowering visual narratives taken by our women also challenge gender and cultural stereotypes, changing external bias over time. Finally, coupled with the content gap in stock photography and our partnership with Getty Images, our women can sell their photos and earn extra income, leading to financial inclusion.

During the piloting phase since 2013, Lensational has provided photography training for 600 women in 15 developing countries: Indonesia, Philippines, Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, Thailand, Cambodia, Kenya, Russia, Nepal, Vietnam, Ghana, Nepal, Singapore and Bhutan. We did not start out prescribing technology as the answer, but through our experiences, we realised that technology can help scale our work to reach millions of women. Therefore, our pedagogy, mobile app and digital platform are all designed with the specific needs and constraints of the digitally disconnected; as well as with feedback loop so that we can iterate our technology. 

Marginalised women will access our solution through local community groups, NGOs and institutions that they are already part of. This will be a free solution for them, as Lensational is run as a hybrid model of grant funding and revenue from photography sales. Once a photo is sold, the photographer receives 50% of the revenue and 50% goes to Lensational.  Alongside our upcycling program from individuals that has provided 200 cameras to date, we have been in active talks with Vodafone, Canon and Apple about the possibility of device upcycling programs, so that we can widen access.  

Lensational’s plan is to reach a 50/50 funding model between grants and earned income by 2018, with our earned income coming from photography sales and services. The global stock photography market (size $2.88bn) is seeking authentic photos from developing countries. Over 60% of photo buyers are headquartered in Europe, but only 6% of stock photos originate from Asia. Lensational is in a strong position to meet this market need, and has secured Getty Images as a distribution partner. As for photography services, we are currently brokering economic opportunities linked to photography: including hiring our women photographers for corporate events (Standard Chartered has committed to this); marketing campaigns (in talks with Colgate); and market research (in talks with NextBillion). For every photo sold, 50% of revenue goes back directly to the women; and 50% goes back to Lensational for us to sustain our work.  

Financial situation: It has been difficult for us to raise start-up funding for two main reasons: our global focus while most funding is country-specific; and our responsive approach while foundation funding has long lead times. Therefore we have been bootstrapping and run completely by volunteers until this year, as we secure a few corporate partners amid the change in philanthropic funding towards women’s empowerment, tech-based and/or youth-led interventions.

Tech infrastructure: as a digital startup working in culturally and geographically disparate communities, we have not been able to streamline our tech systems, with particular pain points in payments and image cataloguing. 

http://facebook.com/Lensational.Org

http://mashable.com/2015/10/04/lensational/

http://twitter.com/LensationalOrg

We got to know about Solve after Solve’s team emailed us about it. Now, we are at a critical junction of transforming from a volunteer-run movement to a self-sustaining social enterprise. We applied to Solve to realise this transformation. With Women and Technology strand being chaired by two business leaders we greatly admire, and the arts education provided by Yoyo Ma’s prize, we believe that the knowledge, expertise and networks will have perfect synergies with Lensational’s needs. As a Solver we hope to scale our solution to benefit millions of women, and help other solutions thrive too. 

To amplify our impact, we actively work with partners across sectors, particularly non-profit, corporates, arts, media and academia. They range from small grassroots organisations in Kenya to the world’s largest stock photo agency, from Affordable Art Fair to Standard Chartered Bank, to UCL Institute for Global Prosperity.

PhotoVoice, Majority World, PicFair