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Go to the bottom of the page to Health, Wellness & Food and find "Franciscan Workers - Dorothy's Place"

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Franciscan Workers - Dorothy's Place

Year Founded: 1982

Paid Staff and Volunteers: 26 paid, hundreds of volunteers
Budget: $1,711,480
757-3838
www.dorothysplace.org
Franciscan Workers - Dorothy's Place
The Big Idea: Leave it to the Franciscan Workers—the good folks who run Dorothy’s Place in Salinas—to come up with a new project that draws homeless women out of the shadows and into the larger community, giving them a voice and an outlet to tell about their lives. Sights Unseen, a Photovoice Project, is a community-based participatory photography program that gives homeless women (shelter guests) cameras to document the everyday people, places and things that constitute their social and economic realities. Beginning with recruitment, safety procedures and basic photographic training, the Franciscan Workers will work with the women to select a weekly topic (such as food, love, drugs, health, homelessness and womanhood), capture it on camera and create dialogue about the issues revealed by the photos. The program will culminate in a public exhibition of the photos accompanied by captions and narratives as to bring these oft-forgotten realities to the eyes of the general public.

Out of the Dark: “Through the exhibition to the broader community, including present and future influential leaders, we hope to build a bridge through which marginalized and mainstream society may share work, love, and awareness with one another.”