A WORLDWIDE UPDATE
As the school year comes to an end for most of our sites in North America it is a chance for us to catch our breath and look at what we have accomplished. Here are some of the highlights.

150 New Students!
Our program in the Tibetan Children's Village (TCV) has been growing at an extraordinary rate. We were very lucky to have Mike Campbell, a student from Evergreen State College, as a mentor in India for almost half a year. It has been a time of great productivity, creativity and growth for our program. Although we don't think of ourselves as an English program, the administration at TCV believes that the Bridges approach to digital storytelling is a very effective way to teach students and they have asked that we expand the program to all of the 7th grade English classes. So, we are welcoming 150 new Bridges students to our program in Dharamsala. That will be 170 students with 7 cameras. Any donations of digital cameras, new or used, would be very timely. continue

BIENVENIDOS A FOTO KIDS IN GUATEMALA!
We are very excited to welcome our newest Bridges site and inspiring partner, Foto Kids. Our new site will be in the village of Santiago Atitlán on the shores of Lake Atitlán, Guatemala. We are honored to be partnering with a pioneer in our field. Founded by photographer Nancy McGirr in 1991 Foto Kids is non-profit organization dedicated to breaking the cycle of poverty through training in visual arts and technology. Nancy began the program by giving cameras to children who lived in the Guatemala city dump. continue

NOTES FROM PHIL
With Susan Hirasawa taking the lead as Executive Director of Bridges and my new role as Artistic Director, I have been afforded time to develop a new body of work. The project, "Stirring the Fire," looks at women who are heroines. Each of the women I have photographed for this project comes from circumstances of poverty, repression and conflict. They have been able to change their world often at a great risk to themselves. continue

STEVEN BAUGHMAN - FLASH ARTIST
Steve is a recent graduate of the Cornish School of the Arts and has created an exciting new addition to the Bridges website. Bridges asked Steve to create an interactive eZine that would get middle school students excited about digital photography, geography and cross-cultural communications. Steve took this on as his senior thesis and it quickly spiraled into the largest project he's ever undertaken.

After several meetings with Bridges students, Steve came up with a game-like environment in which you use the camera to navigate through the site and around the world.  continue