Photography Without Borders

Mission and History

Photography Without Borders (PWB) empowers young artists to tell their stories through photography to a wider audience. PWB teaches traditional and digital photography and video to students from grades 5-12. PWB was started in 2009 by Tony Rocco while he was teaching at John B. Stetson Charter School in the Fairhill section of North Philadelphia. Rocco created the “Stetson Shutterbugs” after school program and included an international exchange program with students in his ancestral Colombia. It was in this spirit that Rocco expanded on the program in 2013 to become a 501(c)3 nonprofit called Photography Without Borders.

Grant Summary

Our students are incredibly engaged and are interested in more opportunities. By allowing our program to expand to more activities, to more hours, other sites, and to include both entrepreneurial, 21st century skill building along with outlets for creative expression; our students will be able to build on their successes as well as have the agency and opportunities to do so. By allowing students to connect with open studio time, we develop young artists who work hard at their craft. By having the studio time supervised and at a community center, we create opportunities for personal and artistic mentorship and community involvement to occur. By offering paid gigs to our students, we light the entrepreneurial fire within them. By allowing them to be paid, they learn self presentation skills, financial skills, work decorum and good habits, and it isn’t a small thing that they bring the money to their home incomes, which can also have an impact on self efficacy and feelings of economic empowerment.

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