Click: Tijuana pedestrians making their way to the U.S. border through the early morning darkness. Click: A driver at the wheel of her car, surrounded by a vehicles pointed north toward the San Ysidro Port of Entry. Click: A pair of trolley trains forming red blurs as they carry border crossers to their destinations. These are moments in the
SAN DIEGO — Eighteen-year-old Vanessa Flores still remembers stumbling over her words on her second day at San Diego City College (SDCC) last fall when the Border Patrol agent in San Ysidro, a district in San Diego just north of the border, asked her where she was going. At first she thought about saying
“I note the obvious differences between each sort and type, but we are more alike, my friends, than we are unalike.” That line from Maya Angelou’s poem “Human Family” still resonates more than two decades after it was first published. The AjA Project’s new photography installation at the San Diego Museum of Man, “Inter+FACE,”
Photographer Edward Steichen once said, “Photography is a major force in explaining man to man.” Photographs speak to our emotions and allow us to tell our story by showing others how we interpret the world. For this reason, photography is a powerful driver of social change and individual growth – two major components of The
Young Muslim women from City Heights in San Diego, California use the arts to tackle topics of identity, representation, and dual-consciousness in their installation entitled: “Navigating the Map of Our Selfhood” Participants from The AjA Project, a City-Heights-based nonprofit (funded by the Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art), exhibited a large-scale public art piece this month at the Museum
In partnership with the Karen Organization, The AjA Project ran a nine-month program with young Southeast Asian refugee women called Photographers for Change (P4C). During the program, 15 Karen participants, ages 13 to 18 years old,in City Heights and Los Angeles’ historic Filipinotown used photography to reflect on their experiences of migration and resettlement, explore
The Aja Project is a San Diego Non Profit organization founded in 2000, created under the mission of providing photography based programming to transform the lives of youth and communities. This subject holds near and dear to my heart as I myself am a product of using art and photography to transform my own
In efforts to positively impact the community, Price Philanthropies and The California Endowment invested an estimated $265 million in City Heights over the past 15 years. The construction of the City Heights Urban Village, a cluster of restaurants, retail stores and produce markets located at Fairmount and University avenues is one of the most tangible developments funded
Overcoming Barriers to Health is a collaboration between The AjA Project and UCSD’s Center for Community Health. The young women that participated ranged from 12 to 17 years old and were first- and second-generation East African refugees and immigrants. Through photography, participants collectively identified health issues and then used their images to create a dialogue
Karen youth perform a traditional bamboo dance during the World Refugee Day festivities at Balboa Park on June 21, 2014. | Photo Credit: Famo Musa, The AjA Project San Diego marked World Refugee Day on Saturday in Balboa Park. Organized by the San Diego Refugee Forum, the event brought together more than eight cultural
