A six-month mentorship programme turns eight young refugees in New Delhi, India, into visual storytellers as they reflect on their personal journeys of loss and hope and their search for identities through the lens of their cameras.
Just what was home, the young refugee storytellers wondered as they trained their lens on emotions, people and objects. Was it a lit window or the heady fragrance of freshly baked bread? Perhaps it was the sound and sight of a pressure cooker, or an old photograph.
The eight young men and women were part of a new United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) programme in India on ‘Home and Belongingness’. They captured their emotions and thoughts about home and family in a series of photographs as part of the programme.
The eight attended weekly workshops where they were trained and mentored on visual storytelling, editing, sequencing and curating of images by educators and Pulitzer award-winning photojournalists, among others.
“Refugees have skills, ideas, hopes and dreams,” says Kiri Atri, Assistant External Relations Officer at UNHCR India. “It is critical that we think beyond a refugee’s basic survival,” he says. It was with this larger goal that the UNHCR moulded the photography programme, hoping to create a safe space and provide opportunities for young refugees.
From June to December, 2021, the eight visual storytellers, chosen after a rigorous portfolio review of their previous work, sought to understand — and then photograph — what home meant to them. The cameras, the programme’s mentors say, have served as a therapeutic tool for the youth to record and reflect on their own journey touching on what they have lost and what they have found, their hopes, identities, past and present.
The programme seeks to empower refugee visual storytellers and to provide them with a platform where they can display their work. Its goals are to amplify refugee voices, change perspectives and strengthen refugee protection, as well as to foster connections among refugees and host communities.
The project was launched in the spirit of the UNHCR’s Global Compact on Refugees, which provides a blueprint for governments, international bodies and other stakeholders on, among other objectives, ways to ensure that refugees can lead productive lives. UNHCR aims at continuing the mentorship programme in the future.
“Community resilience is a powerful tool in humanitarian and development response. The mentorship program's goal is to help refugees gain confidence and tell their own stories. Together, we can help refugees thrive in their new communities. India and its people deserve special thanks for fostering the cultures and traditions of refugees, and in the process enriching Indian society,” says Mr. Oscar Mundia, UNHCR Chief of Mission for India and the Maldives. For the trainees, it was a programme that promised to mould their futures.
The stories that emerged are like little pieces that lead to a bigger picture of home and belongingness: a mother braids her daughter’s hair, a bird soars in the sky, a face peers out of a window, prayers, the sound of music. And new green leaves that symbolise hope.
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Abdul Bari Delawery
Afghanistan
“I want to tell stories through my camera lens”
Abdul (22) wants to be a chronicler of the times. A student at Delhi University, he hopes to be a journalist one day and capture events with his camera. Photography, he says, fascinated him even when he was a young boy living in Kabul. He recalls how he would often visit a small photo studio owned by a neighbour and ask for his camera to click some pictures.
In India since 2018, Abdul is ready to realise his dream through the UNHCR visual storytellers’ programme. The pictures that he captures, he stresses, narrate the stories of people as they are. “I don’t want to edit my pictures,” he says. “I want to click raw pictures. I want to tell stories through my camera lens.” The future spells hope for him.
“When I see my younger brother write in his notebook, I am filled with hope; that life is and can be better. That home is where it all begins,” he says in a caption next to a recent work. A stark photograph of an open book denotes his sister’s thoughts about home: “The smell of books, the euphony of the paper as I turn the pages, the light that falls on the books when I sit to read.” Abdul adds, “If she’s happy to be home here, then so am I.”
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Roya Safura
Afghanistan
“I feel like myself”
Growing up in Kabul, Roya (20) remembers how she always wanted to click pictures at family functions. Armed with a camera and a smile, Roya — a refugee in India since 2019 — hopes that her childhood passion will now help her stand on her feet. “I was afraid to talk to people earlier, but now I feel like myself,” she says. “This project is a great opportunity for me,” says Roya.
Her pictures reflect freedom, as well as a sense of belonging. The photograph of a soaring bird in the evening sky is a symbol of home and freedom. A picture of a house you can look into is an image of home. “We carry our home with us,” she says in the caption for the picture.
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Sediqa Rezaie
Afghanistan
“Home is where my family is”
Sediqa (24) came to India in 2018 from Afghanistan with her mother and four siblings. About the UNHCR programme she says, “I thought of it as an adventure and dived right in.”
The programme has prompted her to think of what home conveys to her. Her pictures capture the many disparate aspects of home – virtual chats with her father, the aroma of bread baked by her mother, sharing light moments with her siblings. “Home is where my family is,” she says.
Mursal Mohammadi
Afghanistan
“Photography is a medium that helps me raise my voice”
What does Mursal (23) mean by home? It is the peace that envelopes her when her mother braids her hair. “I feel the love and care in her hands and it makes me feel at home,” she says. Mursal left Kabul and settled in India as a refugee in 2017.
The third-year student of Multimedia and Mass Communications at Delhi University feels that the UNHCR project will help her hone her storytelling skills. “This project gives me an opportunity to represent my refugee community,” she says. “It is a medium that helps me raise my voice.”
She feels empowered by the fact that she can now tell her own story. “Now I have the power to do so through my camera and not a stranger’s lens.” All we needed, Mursal adds, was a platform and an opportunity.
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Wahidullah Faizi
Afghanistan
“I want to be my own voice through my photos”
Wahidullah (18) loves capturing the streets of Delhi on his camera. “Sometimes I just walk on the streets by myself and click pictures,” he says. Much before he came to India in 2017, he had been taking photographs in Afghanistan, where he grew up. “I loved capturing moments and emotions,” he says.
He believes that the UNHCR visual storytellers’ programme will sharpen his photography skills – and help him understand the concept of home. “As a refugee we are in constant search of a new home,” he says. “This project has helped me figure out what my home is — it is my mother cooking food and my siblings playing.”
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Kap Sian Sang
Myanmar
“My family is my permanent home”
Photography used to be a hobby for Kap (20). Now it is blooming into a passion. The UNHCR project has piqued his interest in the field, and encouraged him to explore different angles. “The more I click, the more ideas I get,” he says.
Kap came to India with his mother from Myanmar at a very young age. He recalls how his mother struggled to raise him. The sight and sound of a pressure cooker brings to his mind the feeling of being at home, he says in a photograph.
But what is home? “My permanent home will always be my family even though I have shifted countries and cities and changed many physical homes,” he replies.
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Zonunmawia Ralte (Daniel)
Myanmar
“I want to be a wildlife photographer”
Daniel (19) beams when he talks about photography. “I want to be a wildlife photographer,” he says. He recalls visiting sanctuaries and zoos in India and clicking pictures of animals. If given the same opportunity today, he says, he would sit in a zoo for hours and “wait for that perfect photograph”.
Daniel, who is a refugee though he was born on Indian soil, remembers how excited he was when he got a call from UNHCR about the visual storytellers’ programme. “I said: Yeah! I want to be a part of this.” The programme with its mentorship, he explains, has guided him in his ambition to become a photographer.
Daniel has probed the many meanings of home in his photography. Raised by a single mother in an unknown city, “it was prayer that kept us going”, he says in one of his pictures. Home is football, and the joy he associates with it. The horizon, he adds in another, assures him that there will be light after darkness.
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Ajaz Musaferzada
Afghanistan
“My home is a place where I can sleep peacefully”
Ajaz (18) remembers the time when he would ask his friends to strike a pose before the camera in Kabul. The UNHCR project, he says, has rekindled his love for photography. “I want to be a fashion photographer,” he says. “I try to capture emotions through my photos.”
Credits:
UN/Photographs by visual storytellers: UNHCR/Abdul Bari Delawery, Roya Safura, Sediqa Rezaie, Mursal Mohammadi, Wahidullah Faizi, Kap Sian Sang, Zonunmawia Ralte (Daniel), Ajaz Musaferzada
Writer: Antra Mudgal
Photographs of visual storytellers: Chirantan Khastgir
Page and layout design: Ishan Mudgal