The AjA Project Mission Statement:

Children affected by war have - by their choices, their actions and expressions - a unique opportunity to raise global awareness and to break the cycle of violence.  In response to this, The AjA Project provides innovative media arts and photography-based educational programs that empower youth to explore identity and develop communication and leadership skills, for the purpose of fostering self-sufficiency, both for the individual and their community.

About The AjA Project

The AjA Project was founded to empower refugee youth to use photography and other media arts to share their stories, gain self esteem, and build leadership skills, thereby helping them to create better opportunities for their futures. Based in San Diego, The AjA Project currently operates three international programs and a traveling exhibition of work from these programs. 
On the Thailand/Burma border The AjA Project runs Record of Truth, a participatory photography program taking place in a refugee camp in Thailand that provides young refugees from the Karen ethnic group in Burma with tools to document their culture and their lives.
Disparando Cámaras para la Paz, The AjA Project’s participatory photography program in Bogotá, Colombia, gives internally displaced children an opportunity not only to reflect on their tumultuous lives but also to feel like protagonists rather than victims. 
In San Diego, The AjA Project runs Journey, an after-school and summer participatory photography class for resettled refugee youth from Afghanistan, East Africa, Southeast Asia, Colombia, and Iraq.  They use media arts to reflect upon, process, and share their experiences of migration. 
“Lives in Transition:  Expressions of Refugee Youth”is a traveling multimedia exhibition showcasing work by students in all three of AjA’s international programs, and developed through a partnership with National Geographic.  It has been exhibited at the National Geographic Explorer’s Hall in Washington, DC, Georgetown University, the United Nations Building in New York City, and the Miami Herald Headquarters in Miami, Florida.  
At AjA we believe that the works these young artists create are powerful tools for educating the local, national, and international community about the experiences of refugees and displaced peoples. At their best, these children's photographs are testimonials that speak not only to the intimacies of their lives and the cultural context of their experiences, but also to the reason why The AjA Project was created—to give young people the tools to create a better world.

Organizational History

The AjA Project began in the summer of 2000 through the efforts of The AjA Project’s Co-Founder, Shinpei Takeda. He created a participatory photography project for Karen refugee youth living in a refugee camp located on the border of Thailand and Burma. This first project was designed to provide Karen refugee youth with the opportunity to learn documentary photography and use it to record their lives and changing culture. Takeda’s vision enabled him to provide the Karen community with important arts and educational programming for underserved young people.
At the end of the program, the community in the refugee camp asked Takeda to make the program permanent. Takeda partnered with Co-Founder Warren Ogden to provide sustainable programming and incorporated The AjA Project on October 18, 2000. On August 20, 2001, The AjA Project was granted non-profit 501(c)3 status.  In July 2002, The AjA Project launched programs outside of Bogotá, Colombia and in San Diego, California.

If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions please email us at info@ajaproject.org.